On June 22, 1941, the German juggernaut rolled over Russia’s borders, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Finland, Hungary, Rumania and Italy joined in the war, for what everyone expected to be a quick kill.

In the United States the isolationists, whose leadership was strongly conservative, were overjoyed. They had been deeply embarrassed by the German cooperation with the Communists. “Now they were free to go berserk with the original Nazi party line that Hitler represented the only bulwark against Bolshevism.”¹

The isolationists wanted to stay out of the war, which would now be won by Germany. Another large segment of American opinion thought that it would be a good thing if the Nazis and Reds killed off each other. After the barbarity and rapacity of the German Fascists had become too obvious to doubt, they were still widely equated with the much feared Reds, especially during the Russo-German truce. Now the evil partners had fallen out. Let them destroy each other!

On the day after the German assault on Russia Senator Harry S. Truman said: “If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.”²

As a policy this proposal was, of course, impossible of execution. It is rarely possible to be on both sides of any issue, or to fluctuate from one side to the other. To do so in a war to the death, in which we were already committed to one side by our deepest interests, would indeed require diplomatic and military jugglery of supernatural proportions. It is as a revelation of his thinking that Mr. Truman’s statement is important. He made no distinction between (a) the fervid appeasement of Hitler by the British and French Governments before Munich and the Russian attempt to ward him off and hold him in check afterwards; (b) between fascism and communism; or (c) between the aggressor and his victim.

A Warm Welcome from Britain. In Britain there was no hesitation about greeting Russia as an ally in a common cause. Britain had survived after Dunkirk, with quick aid from the United States. Then in August 1940 her air force had defeated the German attempt to take control of the skies over Britain and the Channel. Respite had been won from conquest, but not from terror and extreme peril. Obliged largely to take the cover of darkness, the German bombers still made British nights hideous. Few Britons could sleep in peace or look up at the skies without dread. No man had any idea when or how the ordeal could be ended, and then suddenly it was. Virtually all of the German planes went east and the terrible tension was lifted from British hearts. Even the Englishmen who had sought to push Germany toward war with Russia now welcomed the Soviet Union as an ally with great relief.

All this was human and natural, but there was a deeper reason for the British welcome to Russia. Every British leader knew that Britain could never defeat Germany without tremendous military aid. It might eventually come from the United States, but the Americans were showing no signs of early all-out intervention. In the meantime an American army observer in London reported the state of affairs correctly. The imperial situation as a whole was deteriorating. The power of the Germans, plus immense slave labor and frenzied fanaticism was too great for the dogged British. The old rule of the prize ring still held. “A good big man will beat a good little man every time.”³

Winston Churchill’s record of opposition to Russian Communism was second to none. He had been the power house of Britain’s great effort to stamp out Bolshevism in Russia during the wars of intervention from 1918 to 1920. Now he welcomed Russia as an ally warmly and instantly, on the very day of the German attack, in one of his greatest war-time radio speeches. He would unsay no word of his opposition to communism, but all that faded away before the spectacle now unfolding.

“This bloody guttersnipe,” said Churchill, “must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation. Poor as are the Russian peasants, workmen and soldiers, he must steal from them their daily bread; he must devour their harvests; he must rob them of the oil which drives their ploughs; and thus produce a famine without example in human history.” If Hitler were successful in Russia he would attempt to plunge the vast peoples of India and China “into that bottomless pit of human degradation over which the diabolic emblem of the Swastika flaunts itself.”

The British people had no doubts about welcoming Russia as an ally. After two months of freedom from serious air raids the people in the streets wore “an expression of almost incredulous relief.”⁴ A large banner appeared in London saying: “Quiet Nights, Thanks to Russia.”

The United States Divided. In the United States opinion was greatly divided. As Joseph E. Davies, former Ambassador to Russia, said at the time: “there are large classes of people who abhor the Soviets to the extent that they hope for a Hitler victory in Russia.”⁵ Senator Burton K. Wheeler summed up the isolationist argument: “Just let Joe Stalin and the other dictators fight it out.” Former President Herbert Hoover asserted that collaboration between Britain and Russia . . . makes the whole argument of joining the war to bring the Four Freedoms a gargantuan jest,” and Senator Robert A. Taft declared: “A victory for communism would be far more dangerous to the United States than a victory for fascism.”⁶

The intensity of views such as these led to an initial cutting-both-ways statement by Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles twenty-four hours after the invasion, in which Communism was attacked almost as strongly as Nazism, especially for its suppression of freedom of worship. Nevertheless, the statement continued: “The immediate issue that presents itself to the people of the United States is whether the plan for universal conquest, for the cruel and brutal enslavement of all peoples and for the ultimate destruction of the remaining free democracies which Hitler is now desperately trying to carry out, is to be successfully halted and defeated.” In the opinion of our Government, “Hitler’s armies are today the chief danger to the Americas.”

This statement was followed by a presidential announcement, on June 24, that the United States would send all possible material aid to Russia, subject to the prior needs of Britain. Secretary of State Hull issued a statement saying that “there is a world movement of conquest by force, accompanied by methods of governing the conquered peoples that are rooted mainly in savagery and barbarism. The situation calls for... ever increasing production of military supplies for ourselves and for those who are resisting the would-be world conquerors.”⁷

In the lend-lease law Roosevelt was equipped with means of aiding Russia which perhaps he would never have achieved had the isolationists ever suspected that it could be used to aid Red Russia when the lend-lease act was passed in March 1941. Since the President had the power to aid Russia, the anti-Russians led in arguing that the Soviets would be smashed quickly before aid could arrive. Columnist George E. Sokolsky wrote: “Soviet Russia has bluffed the world for a quarter of a century, and the bluff has been called. . . . Russia will soon be eliminated from the war altogether.” Martin Dies, first chairman of the anti-Red House Committee on Un-American Activities, expressed the opinion that Hitler “will be in control of Russia within thirty days.”⁸

Could Russia Survive? The view that Russia was doomed to quick conquest was almost universally held. Our War Department intelligence officers estimated that the campaign could last only one to three months.⁹ This opinion was widespread among military officers in both the United States and Britain. They all agreed that the Germans would slash through Russia like a knife through butter. Most gave the Reds “no more than four to six weeks.” Some thought it would be over in three weeks. With strikingly few exceptions it was agreed that the only question was the number of weeks the Reds could last.

This colossal miscalculation was the product of several factors. The treason trials and purges had pointed toward disorganization and impotence. Russia’s poor showing in the early stages of the war with Finland had deepened this impression, and the Russian policy of veiling their strength with secrecy was still more important. But, above all, a dislike of communism had led the West to deceive itself. It was a bad system and therefore a weak system. It was fatally inefficient because the government managed the whole economy. This could only mean failure to achieve any important amount of production or national strength. To this conviction was added one hardly less universal, that the oppressed Soviet peoples would never fight for such a tyrannical system against the might of the German Army and Air Force.

Two Americans believed differently. One was former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies; the other was Colonel Philip R. Faymonville, who had served with him in Moscow as military attaché. Both had gained the confidence of the Soviet leaders. They knew where the great industrial establishments in the Urals and beyond were and that Russian resistance would amaze and surprise the world. Fortunately, they were listened to in the White House. Faymonville was drafted to get aid to Russia going and spent another very useful tour of duty in Moscow, where he observed that the representatives of the hate-Russia group in the State, War and Navy Departments came to Moscow openly bragging what they would do to Russia later.¹⁰

In July 1941, President Roosevelt had to have some confirmation of the optimistic forecast made by Davies and Faymonville before he could venture large-scale aid to the Soviets. He accordingly sent Harry Hopkins to London, where he found the faintest glimmering of hope that the Russians might conceivably hold out until winter. The Russian armies had already held out four weeks, which was longer than the minimum life assigned to them by the British authorities. Strangely enough, too, Stalin had not seemed to be much impressed by British offers of aid. He was more interested in discussing future frontiers and future spheres of influence, from which the British shied away. One wonders what the effect on the future might have been had they cordially conceded to Russia the frontiers which they had refused in 1939 and which she had obtained from Germany. Certainly a great deal of misunderstanding and of bickering with the inevitable would have been avoided in later years. As things developed, our Government set its face strongly against any recognition of Russia’s new frontiers and prevented the British from making any concession in this respect during the course of the war, when they were later disposed to do so.

Hopkins’ First Mission to Moscow. In London, Hopkins suddenly decided that he should go to Moscow and see for himself what the Russians had. He received quick permission to do so. Having learned of the detailed plans which the British were making to aid Russia, he asked Churchill if he could impart this information to Stalin. “Tell him, tell him,” said Churchill. “Tell him that Britain has but one ambition today, but one desire—to crush Hitler. Tell him that he can depend upon us.”¹¹

In Moscow, Hopkins found Stalin still smarting under the sting of Germany’s violation of the German-Soviet truce. He said that there had to be minimum moral standards among nations and the observance of their treaty obligations or nations could not exist. After listing the supplies which Russia needed most, Stalin said suddenly: “Give us anti-aircraft guns and the aluminum and we can fight for three or four years.” Hopkins was surprised to find that the Russians did not expect to need tanks, thousands of which were then being destroyed in tremendous tank battles with the German panzer divisions, but his surprise was no greater than that of American industrialists and Army officers later on when it developed that the Russian tanks were much better than our own. Stalin gave Hopkins a full and detailed account of Russia’s military situation. They had entered the war with 24,000 tanks, including 4000 heavies, to 30,000 for Germany. They were producing 1000 tanks a month and 1800 planes. The latter figure would soon be increased to 2500. When the war began each side had about 175 divisions.

Hopkins returned with many pages of the most detailed military information, such as no one else had been able to obtain. He returned also with great respect for Stalin as a leader. “There was no waste of word, gesture, nor mannerism. It was like talking to a perfectly coordinated machine, an intelligent machine.” His questions were clear, concise and direct; his answers ready and unequivocal. He never repeated himself. He curried no favor and had no doubts. He was clear about the decisive role of the United States and sure that the military weight of the United States would have to be added to that of Britain and Russia to crush the German military machine. He recognized President Roosevelt’s pre-eminent role as the world leader of the anti-fascist forces. “He repeatedly said that the President and the United States had more influence with the common people of the world today than any other force.”¹²

Hopkins learned also that there was literally no one else in the whole Soviet Government who was willing to give out important information. He continued to be appalled that such absolute power should be concentrated in one mortal man. He left Moscow on August 1, after one of the most fruitful diplomatic encounters of the entire war period, though the Wall Street Journal disapproved of the trip, believing that to give aid to Russia was “to fly in the face of morals.” American military observers in Moscow also continued to cable pessimistic reports which Hopkins knew from what he had seen as well as heard, “could be based on nothing but mere guess work colored by prejudice.”¹³

The President could now proceed strongly to Russia’s aid, though always slowed and sometimes blocked by military and civilian bureaucrats who did not want his orders executed. Eventually, on March 7, 1942, he sent letters to all war agencies ordering all material promised to the Soviet Union released and shipped at the earliest possible date, regardless of the effect of these shipments on any other part of the war program.¹⁴ Early in September, Hopkins listed, doubtless roughly and inadequately, the elements of the American people which opposed aid to Russia, as: “The whole Catholic population is opposed to it, all the Nazis, all the Italians and a lot of people who sincerely believe that Stalin is a great menace to the world.” The Catholic opposition led the President to send Myron C. Taylor as a personal ambassador to Pope Pius XII in November 1941, a mission which apparently prevented serious opposition from the Catholic hierarchy to lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union.¹⁵

Lend-Lease Aid to Russia. From Russia Hopkins went directly to the Argentia Conference off Newfoundland, on August 9, 1941, at which the Atlantic Charter was drawn up. At this meeting the British still moved under the assumption of Russian collapse, arguing that stockpiles of American supplies in Britain would do more good than supplies sent to Russia to be captured by the Nazis. The American military chiefs insisted that weapons in the hands of the Russians would diminish Germany’s strength directly and the conference ended with an agreement that a joint mission should go to Moscow to arrange for help to Russia.¹⁶

Averell Harriman and Lord Beaverbrook, after Churchill the most powerful British advocate of aid to Russia, had three meetings with Stalin beginning on September 28, which resulted in the fixing of the original lists of materials to be sent to the Soviets, the United States being committed to deliver one billion dollars’ worth of supplies from October 1, 1941, to July 1, 1942.

This was the beginning of the military partnership between the Soviet Union and the West which lasted until all of the Axis powers had been conquered. At first the stream of lend-lease supplies was only a trickle. During 1941 its value was mainly moral. During 1942 American war production had not yet reached its stride and there were severe transportation difficulties, so that the aid sent to Russia and Britain could not be tremendous. In 1944 Lend-Lease Administrator Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., found it difficult to assess the importance of lend-lease supplies to Russia in 1942. He felt sure that in certain critical items, such as trucks and field telephone equipment, our aid had been important. He was sure that American tanks were put to good use in the defense of Stalingrad, but his conclusion was that “in the overall picture, the volume of fighting equipment we sent could not have bulked large.”¹⁷ McInnis also estimated that at the time of Stalingrad aid provided by the West was small when compared to Russia’s own production, “and that its quality was often below that of Russian first-line equipment.”¹⁸

After 1942 lend-lease supplies were of the greatest assistance to the advancing Russians. Up to May 31, 1945, 2660 ships were sent to Russia, of which 52 were diverted to Britain and 77 were sunk by the enemy. A total of 15,234,791 tons of supplies arrived in Russia. Many convoys went around the terribly dangerous north capes of Norway, from which German submarines, aircraft and surface ships issued forth upon them, crowded down toward shore as they were by icebergs much of the year and exposed to eternal daylight during a large part of it. Here the losses were heavy. Later on a still larger stream of supplies was sent into Russia by the southern route, after great labor had prepared the way, in the terrific heat of Persian ports and along the inadequate railway through the Persian mountains. Yet more than half of our lend-lease aid went into Russia’s Pacific ports and was shipped over the Trans-Siberian railway.

To the end of the war the Russians managed to supply the great bulk of the actual fighting tools: 92·5 per cent of the planes used; 91·5 per cent of the tanks; 98·5 per cent of the artillery; 95·5 per cent of the shells; 94·5 per cent of the cartridges and 100 per cent of the rifles.¹⁹

It was in transportation equipment that our aid was most important. Some 427,000 trucks, 13,000 combat vehicles and 35,000 motorcycles were forwarded. American jeeps were on all Russian fronts. Railroad equipment included nearly 2000 locomotives and 11,000 cars, all manufactured for the Russian wide-gauge roads. A billion dollars worth of machinery went, 2,670,000 tons of petroleum products and 4,478,000 tons of foodstuffs, mostly consumed by the Army. Four million pairs of army boots were supplied, and much else. Tanks and planes were large items in the later period. The total value of the supplies delivered was $11,000,000,000. The total is huge, yet each month of the war cost us $8,000,000,000 during 1944.

Altogether it is clear that our supplies greatly speeded the Russians in driving the Germans out of their country and back to Berlin. Without our transportation equipment the process would have been much slower and the war would have lasted one to three years longer. If it had, additional hundreds of thousands of American men would have been killed or maimed, at the least. Stettinius ended his discussion of aid to Russia with the conclusion that the Russians had “made a return far beyond any measurement in dollars or tons.” They had made it in the form of millions of German soldiers dead or in Russian prison camps; in the form of many thousands of German guns, tanks, trucks and planes wrecked on Russian battlefields. Our supplies helped the Russians to do “irreparable damage to the Nazi war machine.”²⁰

A great many Americans believe that Russia would have been defeated except for our lend-lease aid. This is possible, but not probable. The Russians had turned the tide at Stalingrad before our help arrived in important quantity and throughout the struggle their own factories supplied the basic sinews of war. We speeded their victory, and ours, and never did a people make better use of weapons put into their hands.

More Gratitude Demanded. The smooth working of lend-lease cooperation was marred by a remarkable outburst on the part of U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Admiral William H. Standley. On March 8, 1943, he called in the American and British correspondents to charge that the Russian people did not know about the lend-lease aid they were receiving.

This was not true, since such items as 2600 planes, 3200 tanks, 72,500 trucks and 3,000,000 pairs of boots were all plainly stamped as made in the U.S.A. The New York Times’ representative, Ralph Parker, found by questioning that everybody recognized American goods, even to sausages, and that millions of copies of photos showing the arrival of American goods had been published in the Russian press. Pravda had also printed the figures on lend-lease aid.²¹

Admiral Standley was not only wrong on his facts, but on his inferences. He spoke of the American people “giving” aid “out of a friendly feeling” for the Russians. He said the American Congress was “big hearted and generous as long as it feels that it is helping some one.”

This was a complete misapprehension of the purpose of lend-lease, one certain to hurt Russian feelings deeply. We were not “giving” the Russians anything. We were sending supplies to enable them to whip the common enemy. There was not an iota of charity or big-heartedness involved. We were contributing trucks and boots while the Russians paid in blood. They fought snow and mud with our stuff, to fight Germans whom we would otherwise have had to defeat.

Standley’s thrust came at a time when fear was growing in this country that the Russians might make a separate peace. Though such a danger really did not exist, Standley invited it by threatening the Russians with a stoppage of lend-lease. With the House of Representatives due to vote the next day on the extension of the lend-lease bill, Standley remarked that “those familiar with legislative procedure know it is a long way from the Foreign Affairs Committee to enactment. The American Congress is rather sensitive.”

When the desperately beset Russians received this sudden blow they naturally supposed it came from the American Government. It helped somewhat when the State Department disavowed the testy Admiral, but even then it was difficult to explain why he should speak in such an inexcusable fashion.

In reality Standley was giving vent to frustrations which did not appear in his blast. He was striking partly at Brigadier General Philip R. Faymonville, who had broad power from the White House to administer lend-lease in Russia. His appointment had displeased the State Department. Then in Moscow he administered lend-lease with single-minded devotion to his orders to find out what the Russians needed and get it to them. His zeal and his close, cordial relations with the Russian officials irked the members of the Embassy who disliked the Russians, especially when he refused to use his power to drive bargains with the Russians, or to use it to obtain information the military and naval attachés wanted. Since Admiral Standley, used to ruling his ship completely, could not tell Faymonville what to do, his public explosion of March 8 attempted “to bludgeon Russia into revealing her military secrets in exchange for lend-lease.”²²

Faymonville was recalled by the War Department in October 1943, along with the Military Attaché, Michela. A month later Faymonville had been demoted to his former rank as a colonel and stationed in Arkansas. The Army’s most valuable man, from the standpoint of working with the Russians, spent the rest of the war in obscurity deep within the U.S.A. General John R. Deane, Faymonville’s successor, came home after the war to write The Strange Alliance, a book in which he explained how distrustful and difficult the Russians were to deal with, especially where military information was involved.

That the Russian soldiers and people appreciated the lend-lease supplies we sent to them is not open to question. They were too well marked, too distinctively American and too useful in a time of desperate need to lack appreciation. The Russians, being landlocked and with little experience on the sea, did fail to realize the bitter toil and danger which our men underwent in order to deliver the goods to them through seas infested with every danger of heat and cold, of storm and enemy action. Closely locked, as they were, in endless mortal combat with the Germans on land, and always yearning for the long-postponed second front which would shorten their agony, the Russians did not have much time to spend in thanking us for the material aids we so painfully sent to them. Yet at Teheran, Stalin proposed a toast to American production, “without which this war would have been lost.”²³ There could be no doubt of the truth of this statement when the entire global struggle is considered. In this context American machine power was as essential as Russian man power.

An Epic Struggle. It is exceedingly difficult for Americans to comprehend the immensity of the struggle in Russia. Our own war effort was world-wide and it involved bitter experiences in all parts of the globe, yet it was diffused in comparison to the epic conflict in the Soviet Union. In the first days of the onslaught the Germans attempted to do what they had achieved in Poland. Vast areas soon became completely saturated with German troops, containing as many men and vehicles as could be moved or maneuvered. The Russians had 2,500,000 men mobilized and they increased this figure to 10,000,000 as rapidly as possible. Within a few weeks both sides accepted the estimate that 9,000,000 men were engaged in battle.

Overhead, thousands of German bombers rained havoc on Russian cities, on every observable troop concentration, rail or road junction or supply dump, while clouds of fighter planes struck down Russian defense aircraft.

The buffer zone which the Russians had acquired in 1939 was largely seized in the first week. One of the functions of this zone had been to veil from the Germans the construction of a defense-in-depth belt of fortifications further back. These fortifications varied from twenty to one hundred miles in depth. They were designed to absorb the onrushing, infiltrating Germans, to catch them between the cross-fire of many strong points and to prevent any massive break-through. Constructed with furious haste, and with the aid of much forced labor, they were not entirely completed when the Nazis struck, but performed their essential function. They slowed the German assault until the Russian armies were fully mobilized. Thereafter great retreats ensued, but there was never a disastrous break-through. Many Russian units were encircled, but they did not surrender, as the French invariably had when surrounded in the West. Instead they fought on, seeking to break out, selling their lives as dearly as possible, sapping German strength. From the immense Russian forests guerrillas constantly harassed the enemy, and as retreats occurred, the land was scorched so thoroughly that almost never did the Germans find any aid or comfort in captured towns of villages. Everything was wrecked, including water supplies. In summer the Germans suffered from thirst and from the suffocating, eye-destroying dust created by their own columns. In winter they had to endure cold such as they had never imagined, and with scant preparation for it. But worst of all was the fierce, implacable hostility of the Soviet peoples.

Nevertheless, they swept up to Leningrad and Moscow. The Russian defense had to be dispersed and it miscalculated in expecting the chief original blow toward the Ukraine. The Russian defenses in the Baltic region held for two months. Then Leningrad was closely invested, but never captured throughout the war. Apart from the military defenses the citizens of the city rose en masse and defended it to the end, man, woman and child. Hundreds of thousands died of cold and hunger, but the remainder never ceased to work and to resist.

The Germans overran half a million square miles of Russian territory, including most of Russia’s older and most valuable industrial regions. Much machinery was shipped east by the Russians, but the loss was immense. The drain on man-power was comparable. In early October the Soviets put their losses at 1,128,000 men. On November 6th, Stalin raised the figure by 600,000.

The central German armies were bending every effort to encircle Moscow from both sides. By late November they were both north and south of the capital, but fresh, warmly clad, well-equipped Russian armies awaited them in the deep forests on both wings, while the people of Moscow dug an ever-widening belt of defenses in front of the city. Four divisions of hastily mobilized members of the Communist party were almost wiped out in front of the city, while the regulars crushed the German spearheads on both sides and threw them back. By December 8, Hitler was announcing that he would not press the attack upon Moscow during the winter.²⁴

During the fighting season of 1942 the Germans elected to smash through to the Volga south of Moscow and far down into the Caucasus, though short of the great oilfields. This time it was Stalingrad which blocked them. Its garrison and citizens fought for each stone in it until German progress was slowed down to a matter of feet, and finally stalled. The city was totally destroyed, and the Germans held nearly all of it, but they could not drive the Russians out of the river bluff which was honeycombed with deep dugouts. The Germans were greatly extended and the Generals wished to draw back, but Hitler’s intuition would not let them. Balked at Leningrad and Moscow, he had sworn to take Stalingrad. Counsels of prudence infuriated him. Thus, on November 19, 1942, the Russians repeated their counter-offensive tactics, with the difference that they swept around a huge pocket of Axis troops containing 330,000 men, including several divisions of Rumanians and some Italian troops. More than half of this great host was killed and the remainder captured, with tremendous booty.

After Stalingrad the Russians began the long, gruelling task of driving the Germans out of their enormous conquests. For two and a half years more the Russians relentlessly drove the Germans backward, using every device, modern and primitive, to speed their advance. Sometimes they swam rivers at night, aided by any doors and boards obtainable in a town, to fall upon the enemy who thought they had all the boats. Methodically the Russians employed concentrations of artillery, such as had never been witnessed before in modern warfare, to smash the German hedgehog defenses. Artillery was their special weapon, an arm in which they needed no help from lend-lease. In the summer of 1943 the Russians used 3000 gun barrels to each mile at Bryansk, a barrage ten times heavier than at Verdun. In the Kursk-Orel battles of the same season, they attained an equal concentration of artillery on a nineteen-mile front.²⁵

In the long road back casualties were always heavy and the sufferings of the Russian people endless. The Soviet Government will never know how many of its people the Germans and their allies killed, directly or indirectly. In the city of Odessa, for example, 200,000 bodies were found after the Rumanian occupation, yet out of that city of 600,000 only 100,000 were left.

What happened to the other 300,000? How many were taken to Germany as slave laborers? The Soviets estimated their military dead at 7,500,000 and the number of civilians killed at five to six millions. Beyond those slaughtered, the Germans used every known device to degrade some sixty millions of people in the regions they occupied. From the great height of their own racial superiority they looked down upon the Slavs as inferior beings, Untermenschen, and did everything within their power to destroy any human dignity in them.

Both the immensity of Russia’s suffering, and the four-year eternity through which it lasted, have to be remembered before we can understand the depth of her feeling about the long delay of the West in opening a second front and her attitude toward post-war issues. It was especially idle to say what future the Russians had in mind for Germany without remembering what they suffered at her hands.

A Political Agreement with Russia Refused. In the military security of continental United States it was easy for us to regard the political settlements of the future with much more detachment. As soon as the Russians recaptured Rostov on November 22, 1941, the Kremlin renewed its pressure upon Britain for political agreement about the post-war world. The situation was tense enough that Foreign Minister Anthony Eden was sent to Moscow on December 7. Before he left he received a vitally important cable dated December 5, which was prepared in the State Department and initialed by President Roosevelt. This message stated that it was our considered opinion that the post-war policies of the United States had been laid down in the Atlantic Charter and that it would be unfortunate for any of the three governments to enter into commitments regarding the specific terms of the post-war settlement. “Above all, there must be no secret accords” and “the constitutional limitations to which this Government is bound must be kept in mind.”²⁶

At the time this policy seemed wise. President Wilson had had unhappy experience with the secret treaties made by the Allies during World War I. The opponents of the Administration in the Senate would also be certain to make great capital out of any treaty arrangements presented to them which appeared to rest upon or to confirm secret agreements made during the war. In the Senate a two-thirds majority is required for the approval of any treaty, a fact which haunted the minds of our leaders incessantly after our catastrophic failure to make peace after World War I. In our unravaged land it seemed wise to wait until the war was over and then settle everything on a basis of high principle. Yet the march of the armies would be sure to determine the main lines of the post-war settlements.

y The question recurs whether an early agreement to recognize Russia’s 1940 boundaries would have prevented much later misunderstanding and rivalry. Assurances that they would never again have to suffer from German aggression seemed vital to the Soviet leaders in the midst of their agony. At the end of September 1941, Stalin had suggested to Beaverbrook a post-war alliance between Russia and Britain.²⁷ He was certainly not thinking then of bitter post-war rivalry with Britain.

Eden’s mission to Moscow in December 1941 was largely fruitless, since he was unable to make any agreements about the post-war world. Stalin proposed the recognition of Russia’s boundaries as of June 22, 1941; the restoration of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Austria and Albania; the transfer of East Prussia to Poland, the detachment of the Rhineland and possibly Bavaria from Germany in the West as independent states and reparations in kind, especially in machine tools from Germany. Stalin was willing to support Britain in securing bases in all of the Western European countries opposite her, including France.

With the exception of the last point, this was a realistic program. It was rejected by the State Department in a long memorandum drawn up by the highly conservative Catholic James C. Dunn, and by Ray Atherton. Their memorandum was accepted by Secretary Hull. It took the wholly unrealistic position that the Soviet acquisition of the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, etc., could not be accepted and that Stalin was probably leading from weakness, “in case the war should end with a weakened Soviet Union not occupying the territories he was demanding,” instead of from strength. Somewhat contradictorily they asserted that there was “no doubt that the Soviet Government has tremendous ambitions with regard to Europe and that at some time or other the United States and Great Britain will be forced to state that they cannot agree, at least in advance, to all of its demands.” It was therefore better to take a firm attitude now, rather than later after a diplomatic retreat had weakened the Western position.²⁸

Thus the Soviets were forced to fight on without any recognition of even their most elementary political demands (i.e., the 1941 frontiers) by their allies, and without any evidence that the West would really destroy Germany’s war-making power. They had to trust to the power of the Red Army to win the guarantees which the West rejected.

The end result of this situation was that the U.S.S.R. secured much wider and deeper guarantees in Eastern Europe than she had proposed in 1941, after it became clear that the Red Army was the most powerful fighting machine on the Eurasian continent. Lacking the restraint of any agreements made freely in advance, before Russia was in the driver’s seat, the West could only conduct a progressive retreat before the Russian advance.

Stalin had made it clear to Eden in December 1941 that since Russia had been invaded three times in thirty-five years through Eastern Europe he never intended to let that region fall into hostile hands again.²⁹ This was, and had to be, the Number One Russian war aim, from which there would be no deviation.

For the time being the non-recognition policy of the State Department triumphed. In April 1942 the British were about to sign an alliance with Russia conceding most of Russia’s border demands. They were conscious that their failure in 1939 to give Russia security in the Baltic region had precipitated the Nazi-Soviet truce and did not want another break with Russia over the same point. Roosevelt suggested a compromise permitting the emigration of such of the Baltic peoples as wished to leave. On May 20, Molotov arrived in London and countered the American opposition with the statement that Russian public opinion had also to be taken into account. At this point Hull sent a still stronger memorandum to the President, arguing that any concession on the Baltic question would be “a terrible blow to the whole cause of the United Nations,” and threatening to denounce the arrangement if the British made it. Roosevelt approved, the British stiffened and the Russians were driven by degrees to abandon all of their demands for the acceptance of their new frontiers. On May 26 they accepted a treaty of alliance with Britain which contained no territorial provisions. Even the Munich agreement with Hitler whereby Czechoslovakia was dismembered stood unrepudiated and it was August 1942 before Benes was finally able to secure its annulment after the strongest pressure, often repeated, on the British Government. The West would accept Russia as a military ally, but would retreat from no single one of the political positions respecting the Soviet Union which they had assumed during the Nazi-Soviet truce. Secretary Hull was “enormously relieved.”³⁰

It is difficult to imagine a more self-defeating position. Fear of Russia combined with the fearsome shadow which the U.S. Senate of 1918–20 cast down the avenue of history to block the opportunity to accept Russia’s 1941 frontiers when this acceptance would have been appreciated. The free and cordial recognition of these frontiers in early 1942 would have been of much more value in setting limits to the expansion of Russian power which the State Department feared than the policy of waiting and conceding as little as possible. Only if Russia, and the West, lost the war could the acceptance of Russia’s 1941 boundaries be avoided.

In mid-1942, also, the West was dependent for its survival, in Europe at least, upon the stamina and power of the Red Army and this would continue to be true. The state of affairs has been accurately described in a statement by General Douglas MacArthur on February 23, 1942, which did a great deal to improve feeling in the Soviet Union. From his headquarters in besieged Corregidor, MacArthur said:

“The world situation at the present time indicates that the hopes of civilization rest on the worthy banners of the courageous Russian Army. During my lifetime I have participated in a number of wars and have witnessed others, as well as studying in great detail the campaigns of outstanding leaders of the past. In none have I observed such effective resistance to the heaviest blows of a hitherto undefeated enemy, followed by a smashing counterattack which is driving the enemy back to his own land. The scale and grandeur of this effort marks it as the greatest military achievement in all history.”³¹

The Second Front

On their side the Russians stood in desperate need of a second front in Europe. They left the recognition of their security needs in Eastern Europe in abeyance in May 1942, because the other need was more urgent. The demand for a second front had been raised first by Litvinov on July 8, 1941. Stalin had repeated it on November 6, and again on February 23, 1942. Three days later Litvinov openly raised the issue in Washington and Maisky made a public plea in London which brought a strongly favorable response from the British press. Everyone knew that the Germans were preparing another tremendous offensive against Russia and that it might succeed. The London Daily Mail spoke for all sections of the British press when it said: “if Russia falls there will fall with her our hope of victory.”

Early in January 1942 the American General Staff began to draw up plans for an invasion of northern France. The basic military argument, stated in a letter from General Marshall to the President, reasoned that only in Western Europe could a powerful offensive be prepared and executed by the United Powers in the near future. In no other place could air superiority be achieved and the bulk of the British ground forces be committed along with our own and in cooperation with those of Russia. The main invasion, originally known as roundup, and later as overlord, was planned for the spring of 1943, but a more limited operation called sledgehammer was to take place about September 15, 1942, in case the situation on the Russian front became desperate. This plan was approved at the White House on April 1, and Marshall and Hopkins were dispatched to London to propose it to the British. There they discovered that the British were not favorable to any such program and that some of their military leaders were not too anxious to get supplies to Russia. British leaders seemed to feel that a great ground attack need never be made.³² This implied that the West could do its share by sea and air.

Attack in 1943 Agreed. However, the Americans made such a strong argument that on April 14 a meeting of the defense committee of the British War Cabinet approved an invasion of Europe for 1943, and Churchill gave assurance that the British would make their full and unreserved contribution to the great enterprise. Marshall was convinced that the British Government now intended to prepare vigorously for the invasion.³³

On May 10 Churchill took cognizance of the strong demand in Britain for an offensive in Europe by assuring the public that the Government was no less permeated with the offensive spirit than the people and that it was only awaiting an opportunity to strike.³⁴

This was the situation when Molotov came on to Washington from London, May 29, 1942. On April 11, Roosevelt had cabled to Stalin a cordial invitation for Molotov to come to Washington. The President had two purposes: to relieve Russian pressure on England with respect to post-war settlements, and to convince the Russian leaders that we really wanted to work with them.

The talks with Molotov covered a wide range of subjects. The State Department had provided the President with a list of nine subjects, none of which concerned the war in Europe. Two of them dealt with an offer of good offices to compose certain difficulties between Turkey and Iran and Russia.³⁵

Second Front in 1942 Promised. For his part Molotov was interested only in the question of a second front. The German blow could be so crushing as to secure the Caucasus and the Ukraine. On the other hand, if the Allies would engage forty German divisions in the West, Hitler would either be defeated in 1942 or his doom sealed. Molotov was assured that we were preparing for a second front and that we expected to open it in 1942. He was permitted to write a sentence in the communique issued on June 11, 1942, which said: “In the course of the conversations full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a Second Front in Europe in 1942.”

This announcement was broadcast by the whole apparatus of Soviet public opinion control and it greatly heartened the Russian peoples. It did much to give them faith in ultimate victory, but Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten promptly brought to Washington the disturbing impression that the British Chiefs of Staff did not think a European landing feasible. They thought that it would be impossible to draw off any German troops from the Russian front, since there were already twenty-five German divisions in France and the shortage of landing craft precluded the landing of adequate troops there. Lord Mountbatten arrived in the White House on June 3, 1942, and stayed two weeks, gradually building up arguments against a Second Front in France in 1942. He had one five-hour session with the President, arguing that some action must occur in 1942 and North Africa was the place. Then the invasion would sweep up through the Balkans past Belgrade to Warsaw.³⁶

Churchill Forced Postponement. After Mountbatten had prepared the way, Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff arrived in Washington on June 20 to argue for an invasion of North Africa, instead of Europe, knowing well that this project had all along appealed to Roosevelt as a naval minded man. General Marshall was “very much stirred up and emphatic over” this proposed change in strategy. He was tired of decisions which did not stay made.³⁷ But Churchill many times dramatized the Channel as a “river of blood.”

Churchill was ever mindful, and rightly so, of the terrible and useless carnage of World War I at Passchendaele and the Somme. Fear of a terrific bloodletting such as had weakened France during World War I was one of the British motives in their long and persistent opposition to a landing in France, reinforced no doubt by the fact that they had failed at the Dardanelles in 1915 and had lately been driven out of France at Dunkirk, and out of Greece. In addition Churchill had an incurable attraction to “eccentric operations.” This was traditional in British military history, since the British usually fought more numerous foes. He dreaded frontal operations and always sought to deliver some swift surprise blow somewhere on the perimeter where the enemy was weak. He persisted in believing that Germany could be defeated by superior sea and air power, “plus superior wits,” always insisting that a defeat on the French coast was “the only way in which we could possibly lose this war.”

This minimization of the disaster which could occur on the Russian front was overshadowed by the fall of Tobruk on June 20, opening up the possibility of a German-Japanese junction in the Middle East. Churchill at once “poured forth his matchless prose” in opposition to a Channel crossing and in favor of a landing in North Africa. Marshall, Hopkins and Roosevelt vigorously opposed him. The American military men were deeply concerned, knowing that the proposed diversion of troops and supplies would prevent the invasion of Europe in the Spring of 1943, and in all probability throughout the year.³⁸

In one long night session at the White House, Churchill made one of the greatest and most impassioned speeches of his career, painting the virtues of the diversion through Africa and the “soft underbelly attack.” Colonel Albert Wedemeyer, speaking for General Marshall, demolished all of Churchill’s grandiloquent generalities with factual and statistical evidence that the cross-Channel invasion was the right plan and the other one wrong, but Churchill would not budge.³⁹

North Africa Substituted. Since the British categorically refused to take part in anything except the invasion of Africa, Roosevelt decided that it would have to be accepted, since it would be disastrous to morale on our side, mostly in Russia but in America as well, if no offensive was undertaken in 1942.

Secretary Stimson was strongly opposed to the shift of operations. He “pushed his disagreement with the President to the limits prescribed by loyalty” and his opposition was fully shared by the War Department staff, but without success. North Africa was invaded on November 8, 1942. Russia was left to absorb the full brunt of Germany’s fury at Stalingrad. Instead of the Allies taking some of the weight off Russia it was the other way around. The immense German debacle at Stalingrad prevented the Germans from reacting to the African invasion as they would have. Eventually the Allied conquest of Africa benefited Russia moderately by opening up the Mediterranean and speeding the shipment of supplies to her through Persia. There was a great saving of shipping. But during the second great summer crisis of their long battle for survival against the full weight of the German war machine this prospect was cold comfort. Stalin welcomed the move publicly, but all it brought to Russia was a minor distraction of German attention.

To the Germans the decision to attack North Africa was capital good news. They had to expect a great Allied landing somewhere, and the Allies chose to strike far away from Germany. At the moment when the Germans were stretched to the limit, from Berlin to Stalingrad, they would not have to meet a great Allied attack in France, one that would require 50 to 100 divisions to cope with. Instead, they could throw a dozen additional divisions into North Africa and keep the Western Allies occupied for another six months. There would be no Allied invasion in the West in 1942, or in the Spring of 1943. The Germans were to keep the Americans and British busy with small forces all through 1943 and the first half of 1944, as the Allies, slowly and painfully, fought their way up the mountainous Italian peninsula.

The decision to make the North African detour was one of the most fateful made during the entire war. Politically, it involved us in the whole sorry business of preserving the power of French fascism in North Africa, and of carrying on a long and futile campaign to keep General de Gaulle and the Free French from taking their rightful place in France.

Our preparations in North Africa centered around a close working arrangement between the American Consul General, Robert Murphy, and Lemaigre-Dubreuil, a pre-war fascist who represented powerful Franco-German economic interests. Being open and notorious collaborators and partners with the Germans, Lemaigre’s group wished to get on the winning side in North Africa, to which their German confederates permitted them to transfer the huge profits of collaboration—twenty-five billion francs before the invasion in mid-November 1942, including nine billions just prior to it—when they knew the time was short. From this and other sources the Germans were well warned of the coming invasion and ready to act accordingly.⁴⁰

Limited Invasion Rejected. In mid-July 1942, General Marshall, Admiral King and Harry Hopkins went to London for a conference with the British under written orders from the President to press for the execution of sledgehammer the limited operation against Western Europe. “Such an operation” the order said, “would definitely sustain Russia this year. It might be the turning-point which would save Russia this year, sledgehammer is of such grave importance that every reason calls for accomplishment of it. You should strongly urge immediate all-out preparations for it, that it be pushed with utmost vigor, and that it be executed whether or not Russian collapse becomes imminent. In the event Russian collapse becomes probable sledgehammer becomes not merely advisable but imperative. The principal objective of sledgehammer is the positive diversion of German Air Forces from the Russian Front.”

In London, on July 20, the Americans agreed to push hard for a limited operation, the seizure of the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy as a permanent bridgehead for roundup. However, the British opposed this move and the American Naval authorities agreed that the weather hazards were probably serious. Nothing but North Africa was left and the British were inclined to postpone a final decision even on it, until September 15. On July 25, Hopkins cabled Roosevelt urging him to name a definite date for the North African invasion not later than October 30, 1942, since the situation in Russia was so serious that delay was dangerous. Roosevelt so ordered and resisted further efforts to postpone action.

The problem now was how to explain to Stalin that there would be no Second Front in Europe in 1942. Churchill was invited to Moscow on July 31, so the task was left to him. Harriman accompanied Churchill and the two arrived in Moscow on August 12. In their first session in the Kremlin Stalin took issue at every point with the greatest bluntness. He was not impressed by Churchill’s diagram of the Nazi monster being punctured by the West in its soft underbelly. Later, he saw several advantages which would result, but the next day presented a memorandum arguing that the German forces left in the West were few in number and inferior in quality. He stressed the blow to Soviet morale if there were no diversion in the West. If the Russians could engage 280 German divisions surely the British and Americans could land six or eight divisions on the Cherbourg Peninsula.

As nearly always happened in conferences with the Russians the final session was friendly and cordial. The Americans supposed that the tough talk in the middle of the conference represented the reaction of the Politburo. At the close of the conference Roosevelt cabled Stalin: “Believe me when I tell you that we are coming as quickly and as powerfully as possibly we can. Americans understand that Russia is bearing the brunt of the fighting and the casualties this year and we are filled with admiration for the magnificent resistance you are putting up.”⁴¹

On his part Stalin had given Harriman the feeling in the Moscow talks that, though greatly disappointed, he considered that he was dealing with two nations with whom he had binding ties and that with the President and Churchill “he could personally interchange views in the frankest manner without fear of breaking up the relationship. At no time did he show any indication that some action or lack of action on either of our parts might fundamentally affect this understanding.”⁴²

Soon afterward, on August 19, a Canadian force supplemented by British commandos made a raid on the French port of Dieppe. It was insisted that it was only a reconnaissance in force, but losses were very heavy, confirming the British aversion to storming Hitler’s European Fortress. The raid also enabled the Germans to boast about the impregnability of that fortress, and put a heavy damper on the hopes of the Russian people for a Second Front.

In late September another convoy was due to sail by the northern route, after the last one had lost a third of its ships, in spite of seventy-seven escorting warships. In view of this fact and the great need for naval vessels for the African venture, Churchill proposed the abandonment of the convoy. However, our Navy suggested that the ships sail by twos and threes and Roosevelt cabled to Churchill proposing that course, since “our greatest reliance today is the Russian Front.” It was better “to run this risk rather than endanger our whole relations with Russia at this time.”

Contemporaneously, General James H. Bums submitted a far-sighted statement on our relations with Russia. It was clear to him “that we must be so helpful and friendly to her that she will not only battle through to the defeat of Germany and also give vital assistance in the defeat of Japan, but in addition willingly join with us in establishing a sound peace and mutually beneficial relations in the post-war world.” Among many means of implementing this policy Burns suggested that we “treat Russia as one of the three foremost powers in the world” and offer her very substantial credits for rehabilitation and expansion, since her post-war needs would be “simply overwhelming.”⁴³

Aside from his unwillingness to make political agreements with Russia until after the war, this was the policy which President Roosevelt consistently endeavored to follow. He knew something of the long decades of hostility between the West and the Soviets and sought to convince the Red leaders that this epoch was ended. We sincerely wanted to be friends as well as allies. Knowing that it was vital to make contact with Stalin, he made four unsuccessful attempts to do so before he finally accomplished a meeting at Teheran on November 28, 1943. Always Stalin pleaded the primacy of his military duties, and this was difficult to deny.

On November 9, 1942, Churchill had a conference with Ambassador Winant and General “Beedle” Smith, who reported to Marshall that Churchill was reluctantly abandoning the idea of an invasion of Norway but was thinking of getting Turkey into the war for an invasion of the Balkans. He appeared to be cooling on the Second Front. Two weeks later Churchill was expressing great concern to Roosevelt about alleged American abandonment of plans for the Second Front. If it was not possible to invade in 1943 it was “all the more important to make sure we do not miss 1944.”⁴⁴

The “Soft Underbelly” Attacked. At the Casablanca Conference in North Africa in early 1943 Churchill was arguing that after conquering North Africa the next move should be “to strike at the underbelly of the Axis in effective strength and in the shortest possible time.” Events now moved with him, as both sides had foreseen. By January 18 the decision to attack Sicily had been made. This was essential to clearing the Mediterranean. Marshall had still urged the importance of invading France in 1943, but immediate Mediterranean objectives claimed the day. The best he could secure was a statement of objectives which put an attack on the Cotentin Peninsula on August 1, 1943, as fourth in order of priority.⁴⁵

By this time the “soft underbelly” idea had taken strong hold of Churchill. He saw that Russia was holding at Stalingrad and would probably take the long road back. If she did, it would be better for the armies of the West to be in the Balkans before she got there.

At the close of the Casablanca Conference Roosevelt and Churchill sent a long report to Stalin which elicited this response from him early in February 1943:

“Thank you for the information in your friendly joint message on the decision made at Casablanca in regard to operations to be carried out during the last nine months of 1943 by British and American armed forces. It is my understanding that by the decisions you have taken you have set yourselves the task of crushing Germany by the opening of a Second Front in Europe in 1943 and I should be very obliged for information concerning the actual operations planned for this purpose and on the time scheduled for carrying them out.

“I can give you assurance that the armed forces of the Soviet Union will do everything in their power to carry on offensive operations against Germany and her allies. But our troops are now tired and in need of rest and will be unable to continue the present offensive beyond the middle of February, and we intend, circumstances permitting, to wind up our winter campaign at that time.”⁴⁶

It was not easy to answer this message, and other similar ones. On February 22 Roosevelt told Stalin: “You may be assured that the American war effort will be projected to the European continent, to reduce the Axis forces opposing your heroic army, as soon as possible when transportation facilities can be provided following the successful conclusion of the North African campaign.”⁴⁷

This was another fairly strong promise. It was not definite as to time, but it implied that help was coming soon. Yet the mopping up of Tunisia was not completed until late in May and the invasion of Sicily did not begin until July 9. Then it was decided to seize Southern Italy, especially to get the great airfields at Foggia, and to try to put Italy out of the war. It was late September before a firm foothold was achieved on the mainland of Italy.

American Moves Toward a Russian Second Front. Herbert Feis has pointed out that during the whole period in which Stalin was calling for a second front in Europe “he was repelling repeated American requests for cooperation in the war against Japan. Time and again, on the advice of the Joint Chiefs, Roosevelt tried to get him to agree at least to start preliminary talks looking toward combined operations in the Far Eastern theaters of war.” While constantly postponing the aid which the Russians so desperately needed, we were inviting them “to take the risk of having to fight on a second front—in the Far East.”⁴⁸

Unconditional Surrender. The Casablanca Conference was the scene of a very important statement of Allied policy which is still the subject of strong controversy. In the final press conference, on January 24, 1943, President Roosevelt rather casually called for unconditional surrender from Germany, Italy and Japan, and he later contributed to the idea that it had been an impromptu suggestion.

Actually he had notes in his hand which stated the reasons for enforcing unconditional surrender. Also the formula had been discussed and approved by the American Chiefs of Staff a week before Roosevelt left Washington. At Casablanca, on January 18, Churchill had approved it, and he had telegraphed to the British War Cabinet for its approval, which he obtained.⁴⁹

There were two reasons for making such a statement at the moment. There was strong protest from the liberal forces supporting Roosevelt in the United States against the expediency deals with Darlan and Peyrouton in North Africa, and fear that there would be other deals with such characters as Goering in Germany and Matsuoka in Japan.⁵⁰ But more important still was the unallayed longing of the Russians for a second front, and the necessity of permanently setting to rest their fears that we might not see the war through to a finish as loyal allies. Nothing short of a “fight to the finish” statement was likely to give them that conviction.

Beyond these contemporary factors there were solid reasons for insisting that this time the Germans should learn the lessons of defeat, that they be invaded, conquered and prevented from coming up again with a new stab-in-the-back theory, and with allegations that they had been promised better terms than they received. Complete firmness in dealing with the Germans was also dictated by the consideration that, in Churchill’s words, “negotiation with Hitler was impossible. He was a maniac with supreme power to play his hand out to the end, which he did.”⁵¹

The reasons for adopting the unconditional surrender policy are difficult to counter, but there has been much criticism of its public announcement. Predictions at the time that the Germans would fight longer and harder were borne out, since the Nazi propaganda could tell the Germans that there was no choice but to stand by the regime. In the last months of the war this plea was all the more effective, since the Germans had several millions of embittered slave laborers in their midst, seized from the various allied countries, and they greatly feared a breakdown of all authority in the final stages.

The Germans did fight longer and harder than they would have if easier terms had been open to them, but it does not necessarily follow that Hitler could have been overthrown, or that it would have been a good thing to be magnanimous to some government headed by German generals who had done Hitler’s will while any hope of success remained.

1943 Passed. There was no Second Front in 1943. “It was the Russian situation which continued to dominate the whole strategic picture.”⁵² Germany had a third chance to make a supreme effort at least to inflict upon Russia “a defeat of such proportions that her offensive power would be broken and Germany would be able to turn the greater part of her forces against the allies in the west.”⁵³ In the latter part of the fighting season of 1943 the Allied operations against Italy tied down some twenty divisions of German troops which might have been sent against Russia, but the Russians tied down at least 200 Axis divisions which could otherwise have been used in the West. It was in the East that the giant forces still wrestled, to and fro, in the summer of 1943, with the Russians again regaining much ground and losing men at the rate of hundreds of thousands a month.

Moscow’s bitterness was not concealed, though it did relent occasionally, as when Stalin said about the air war in the West: “from the bottom of my heart I welcome British aviation striking hard against German industrial centers.”⁵⁴ In his turn Churchill wrote later: “These three immense battles of Kursk, Orel and Kharkov, all within a space of two months, marked the ruin of the German army on the Eastern Front.”⁵⁵

Our leaders knew what it would mean should Russia fall. Stimson and Marshall spent “many anxious hours in contemplation of the awful task of beating Nazi Germany if the Russians should go under.”⁵⁶ They did not go under, but it was inevitable that throughout 1943 they should think bitterly that their allies were going a long way around to come to their relief. It was equally inevitable that many Russian leaders should suspect that the West intended that Russia should be so weakened that she would not be a powerful factor after the war. Perhaps the Munich policy was not dead after all.

After Standley’s outburst on March 8 about Russia’s lack of appreciation of lend-lease, Joseph E. Davies was sent to Moscow in May to try to arrange a meeting between Stalin and Roosevelt. The President felt the ice might be broken better if Churchill were not present. But when Stalin openly charged the Western Allies with bad faith on the Second Front question in a message to Churchill, the latter replied with such a scorcher that Stalin recalled his Ambassadors from both London and Washington in October 1943. The Roosevelt-Stalin meeting was off and there were real fears of another Soviet-Nazi truce.⁵⁷

On May 11, 1943, Churchill led a party of nearly one hundred officials to Washington for the conference known as Trident, at which the date for the Normandy invasion was finally set for May 1, 1944. More important, it was agreed that seven of the divisions in the Mediterranean were to be held after November 1 for transfer to England and training for overlord. “Against this provision Churchill was later to strain in vain; it turned out later to be the crucial deterrent to the extension of Mediterranean operations.”⁵⁸

Churchill Unconverted. Later, in May 1943, Churchill visited General Eisenhower’s headquarters in North Africa, with General Marshall and General Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Churchill insisted that he had no intention of interfering with the preparations for overlord, the cross-Channel attack in 1944, but he wanted the prospective Sicily conquest fully exploited.

Eisenhower was puzzled as to the meaning of this, especially after Brooke told him that he himself would be glad to abandon the Normandy invasion, trusting to naval and air power. “Any suggestion or intimation of abandoning overlord,” said Eisenhower, “could always be guaranteed to bring Marshall and me charging into the breach with an uncompromising, emphatic refusal to consider such an idea for an instant.” They were therefore on guard against anything more than a limited campaign in Italy.⁵⁹

When Roosevelt, Churchill and their military chiefs met in Quebec, on August 17, 1943, for the conference known as Quadrant, Churchill was still unreconciled to any major operation in Western Europe, though he had agreed to it at Washington in May. He talked at length again about appalling casualties, and failed to credit the Allied air forces with ability to disrupt the enemy communications in France. He wanted further evidence that the strength of the German fighter aircraft force had been reduced and that there would be not more than twelve mobile German divisions in North France.⁶⁰

The American Chiefs of Staff were fearful that, as in 1942, decisions made in the Spring would be reversed in the Fall, but in 1943 Roosevelt was adamant that overlord must take place, and the decision to make it was again reaffirmed. It was at Quebec also that the decision was made to supplement the Normandy invasion with landings in Southern France. From the time of this decision, Churchill fought implacably against it until a few days before it occurred, on August 15, 1944.⁶¹

As early as August 10, Secretary Stimson wrote to the President contesting the assumption that overlord would be directed by a British commander. Said Stimson: “We cannot now rationally hope to be able to cross the Channel and come to grips with our German enemy under a British Commander.” In unguarded sentences the British leaders had revealed to him again and again their idea that Germany could be beaten by a series of attritions in Northern Italy and throughout the Balkans. This attitude was “terribly dangerous.” Both Britain and the United States were clearly pledged to the opening of a real Second Front and “none of these methods of pinprick warfare can be counted on by us to fool Stalin into the belief that we have kept that pledge.”⁶²

The President agreed and Churchill readily accepted General Marshall as the Commander of overlord, but there was so much pressure in Washington for Marshall’s retention as Chief of Staff that General Eisenhower was eventually selected.

In the autumn Stimson pressed for Marshall’s appointment. He believed that “the fatal delays and diversions which may sabotage overlord will begin in the U.K. this autumn and nothing but his direct presence and influence will save us from them.”⁶³ In September Churchill’s Mediterranean complex led him to order the seizure of some of the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea, which were promptly recaptured by the Germans, the British losing 5000 first-class troops, four cruisers and seven destroyers sunk or damaged.⁶⁴ Churchill then pleaded repeatedly with Roosevelt in long telegrams of October 7 and 8, 1943, for one first-class division and the necessary landing craft to take Rhodes. He had “never wished to send an army into the Balkans,” but only agents and supplies. Rhodes was “the key.” The chance to take it was “an immense but fleeting opportunity.” However, the “negative forces” in Washington did not want any diversions from Eisenhower’s strength, in Italy or from overlord. They held that Rhodes would be only a beginning since it was under the guns of Cos and Crete, both held by the Germans.⁶⁵

How to Counter Russia? On August 31 and September 3, 1943, General Jan Smuts of South Africa, one of the world’s leading soldier-statesmen, wrote two remarkable letters to Churchill on the progress of the war in which he said that comparisons with the Russian effort raised uncomfortable questions. “Our comparative performance on land is insignificant and its speed very unsatisfactory.” To the ordinary man “it must appear that it is Russia who is winning the war. If this impression continues, what will be our post-war world position compared with that of Russia? A tremendous shift in our world status may follow, and will leave Russia the diplomatic master of the world.” This was both unnecessary and undesirable, but “unless we emerge from the war on terms of equality, our position will be both uncomfortable and dangerous.”

Then Smuts expressed his dissatisfaction with the Allied war plans for slogging up the Italian peninsula and urged that North Italy be taken at once as a springboard for a big effort in the Balkans, which he thought would bring Turkey into the war, opening the Black Sea for the supply of Russian forces, before she concluded “that her suspicions of us are justified.”⁶⁶

The Smuts letters state the almost insoluble problem which the Munich surrender of 1938 bequeathed to the Western statesmen. How could Russia be prevented from dominating the world through the sheer prowess of her arms? How could limits be set to her advance into Europe without imperilling her indispensable contribution to Hitler’s defeat? How could the Allies make a military contribution of their own comparable to Russia’s, sufficient to establish a good post-war balance, in cooperation with her as comrades in arms?

This was really the problem, for until the very end of the war no one wanted Russia to stop advancing, and no solution that would satisfy everybody was possible. Churchill maintains throughout his memoirs that he never wanted to send armies into the Balkans.⁶⁷ This, he says repeatedly, is a “legend.” He wanted “only by agents, supplies, and Commandos to stimulate the intense guerrilla activity there.” A lot of this was done, also, by sending in officers, money and supplies, but in both Yugoslavia and Greece Churchill found himself cooperating with communist-led partisan movements which dwarfed the small and ineffective rightist guerrillas. So there was not too much hope politically in that direction. In 1944 Churchill crushed the Greek communist-led partisans ruthlessly, but no one was able to suppress Tito’s communists in Yugoslavia. Even Moscow failed to manage them for long after the war.

The avalanche of events which Munich turned loose confronted the West with a conundrum which no Western leader was ever able to solve to his satisfaction. It was much easier to turn the giant armies loose than to stop them where it was desired. During 1943, Wilmot says, Churchill became increasingly concerned about fighting the war in a way which would restrain Stalin’s ambitions and “ensure that victory did not leave the democratic cause politically weaker in any vital sphere.”⁶⁸ This was a natural ambition, but one impossible to achieve, since an Allied victory meant a large increase in communist power.

The Moscow Conference, 1943. In August the Russian press had suggested that since the Allied Heads of State could not meet, there might be a meeting of the Foreign Ministers. This suggestion was taken up and resulted in the Moscow Conference, which began on October 19. This Conference proved to be an outstanding success for Secretary Hull. Hull had excellent relations with Soviet Ambassador Gromyko, of whose practical judgment and efficiency he had a high opinion. In Moscow he found Molotov increasingly pleasant and communicative. Their conversations became steadily more free and outspoken. Hull was more and more impressed with Molotov’s “broad grasp of the questions entering into the discussions.” They agreed about the destruction of fascism in Italy and about the post-war treatment of Germany. The draft on this subject by Hull brought Molotov back from Stalin with his face “radiant.” It expressed Russia’s thoughts exactly. Molotov agreed warmly with Hull’s statement that the closest relations and confidence between their two countries were of vast importance. The hairbreadth escape which the world had had from “being conquered and enslaved under the worst methods of savagery” was strongly in Hull’s mind and made him feel much as the Russians did. He had no difficulty in agreeing that East Prussia should be separated from Germany.

Molotov assured Hull emphatically that his Government had no disposition to divide Europe into separate zones of influence. The Conference produced a declaration concerning the re-establishment of an independent Austria, a strong seven-point statement regarding the elimination of fascism from Italy and an equally forthright statement regarding the punishment of German war criminals. Most important, however, was the Joint Four-Nation Declaration which pledged the three Great Powers and China to continue united for the organization and maintenance of peace and security. All would act together in all matters relating to the surrender and disarmament of the enemy, they would continue to consult and they agreed upon the necessity of establishing “at the earliest practicable date a general international organization based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving States.” This was the basic agreement for the establishment of the United Nations.

Hull had convinced the Soviet leaders that he sincerely wished to work with them for the mutual advantage of our two nations in the post-war world. He found Stalin completely sympathetic with this objective. When they parted Stalin told Hull goodbye and then after walking three or four steps away suddenly turned, came back, and “shook hands a second time to a rather protracted extent, but without saying a word.” The dictator of all the Russians was not obliged to do that. It might be too much to conclude that Stalin signified thereby a basic desire to cooperate with the West on a long-term basis, though he had just made such an agreement, but he must have felt that Hull was one representative of the West with whom he wanted to be friends.⁶⁹

Churchill Pushed Mediterranean Diversions. On November 13, 1943, the President and his military chiefs sailed for the Cairo Conference. On the way they braced themselves for more British opposition to overlord. They had learned that Churchill always gave it his most eloquent approval in principle, but that “he steadfastly refused to accept it as a scheduled fact.” Nor were they mistaken. When they all arrived in Cairo Roosevelt informed his son Elliott that in spite of the agreement at Quebec Winston was still making his doubts clear to everybody. It was still the idea of an attack through the Balkans, dressed up now as “a common front with the Russians.” Roosevelt thought that Churchill was beginning to dislike Marshall, since the General was very patient and polite but completely firm. None of Churchill’s tactics, whether of wheedling, logic or anger, moved Marshall from his conviction that the Germans must be hit where they were.⁷⁰

In the Cairo sessions Churchill argued for pushing the campaign to capture Rome more vigorously than ever. He strongly emphasized that he was not relaxing his zeal for overlord, but this operation should not be such a “tyrant” as to rule out everything else. There were the Dodecanese Islands, among other objectives. When the Allies reached the Pisa-Rimini line north of Rome they should then decide whether to move to the left or to the right. Since he was known to be opposed to moving left, into Southern France, it was obvious that he had in mind a move to the right into the Balkans.⁷¹

In a conference with Eisenhower before the Cairo discussions, and during them, Churchill argued for the “soft underbelly” theory, explaining how the Germans could be damaged by pushing the Italian campaign and by invading Yugoslavia, Crete, the Dodecanese Islands and Greece. In estimating Churchill’s motives Eisenhower placed some credence in a desire on Churchill’s part to prove that his Gallipoli strategy of World War I had been right, but he gave first place to Churchill’s “concern as a political leader for the future of the Balkans.” This concern, he adds most considerately, “unconsciously” colored the Prime Minister’s military strategy.⁷²

“When?” In Teheran, on November 29, Stalin was shown a copy of the plan for overlord in his first interview with Roosevelt. He looked at it briefly and asked, “When?” Later he inquired “Who will command overlord?” and when told that this had not been decided he replied that he could not believe in the reality of the operation until a commander had been named. He argued that the commander should have charge of the preparations, as well as the attack itself, otherwise he would not be satisfied to proceed. It was on his way home that Roosevelt finally decided to name Eisenhower.⁷³

Churchill warned that there might be delays in launching overlord and explained persistently and monotonously the advantages of getting Turkey into the war. By this time Marshall had reached the point that he simply looked at Churchill when he questioned overlord as if he could not believe his ears. After a final gallant attempt by Churchill to advance the merits of Rhodes and Turkey as strategic points, Stalin asked him if the British really believed in overlord or did they merely approve it to reassure the Russians?⁷⁴

General Deane says that Churchill used “every trick in his oratorical bag,” aided by gestures and illustrations. “At times he was smooth and suave, pleasant and humorous, and then he would clamp down on his cigar, growl and complain.”⁷⁵ If personality could have convinced the Americans and the Russians that the Western Allies ought to attack Germany by the hardest route, Churchill would have done it. Even on the last day of the conference he still talked about the landing craft needed for an assault on Rhodes, and Hopkins did his best to make clear the American belief that none would be available.⁷⁶

An Anglo-American Front Against Russia Avoided. Many subjects were discussed at Teheran, among them the granting of rights to Russia in the Chinese port of Dairen and her possession of the Kurile Islands after the war. Roosevelt presided over the sessions and his views were usually accepted. He also had convinced Stalin that he wanted to cooperate with the Soviets as friends. Roosevelt liked Stalin, found nothing devious in him and admired his directness. In turn Stalin showed marked deference to Roosevelt. The two established a basis of respect and confidence which augured well for the years after the war.

At the close of the conference Roosevelt thought its biggest achievement had been to make clear to Stalin that the United States and Britain were not teamed up against Russia. That would be the one thing which could “upset the apple cart” after the war and he meant resolutely to avoid it by holding the scales even between Britain and Russia. On his last Christmas Day in Hyde Park (1944) Roosevelt talked reflectively of British ability to get other countries to combine in some sort of bloc against the Soviet Union and said soberly, “It’s what we’ve got to expect.”⁷⁷

When he left Teheran, Roosevelt sincerely believed in the final words of the Declaration issued: “We came herewith hope and determination. We leave here friends in fact, in spirit, and in purpose.” In his radio broadcast on Christmas Eve, 1943, the President paid tribute to Churchill and said of Stalin: “I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people—very well indeed.” The prospects were excellent, for in Russia the whole official machine of opinion control was working full blast on the theme of the “Historic Decisions” at Teheran and Allied unity in war and in peace.⁷⁸

A Churchill Charge in Italy. On Christmas Day, 1943, Churchill was meeting with Eisenhower demanding the landing of two divisions at Anzio in Italy, a hundred miles north of the stalled Allied expedition, and getting it against Eisenhower’s better judgment. In the end this venture succeeded to the extent that the six divisions thrown in at Anzio led the Germans to send eight divisions to Italy, forces not available in the main theaters in 1944. The Italian business went ahead slowly and painfully during the gloomy winter of 1943—4. For it Churchill had verve and dash, no hesitation or fears, and sorrow but no terror for the heavy casualties which resulted.⁷⁹

Invasion of South France Opposed. On June 6, 1944, overlord at last became a fact. The Americans and the British were finally ashore in France, but on July 19 Churchill was still opposing the landing in Southern France and arguing doggedly for the diversion of forces to the Balkans.⁸⁰ Churchill went to France and virtually lived with Eisenhower for the first ten days of August, arguing throughout the whole period against the invasion of Southern France and for the use of this expedition in Italy or the Balkans. He concentrated all the power of his intense personality on Eisenhower, contending that an entry into the Balkans would set the whole region aflame with revolt against Hitler. Though the Intelligence reports showed little effective German strength in South France, Churchill was full of the terrible casualties the Allies would suffer there. He argued that it would be “merely another Anzio,” forgetting his responsibility for that move.

Eisenhower more than met Churchill’s arguments at every point on military grounds. He “felt that the Prime Minister’s real concern was possibly of a political rather than a military nature.” He told Churchill that if he was thinking that it would be better for the Western Allies to be posted in great strength in the Balkans, instead of the Russians, he should go instantly to the President. If they decided that for political reasons the war should be prolonged, with further costs in money and men, he would adjust his plans accordingly. In the meantime, he would proceed on military grounds.

Churchill knew, of course, that it would be useless to approach Roosevelt, but “As usual the Prime Minister pursued the argument up to the very moment of execution.”⁸¹

Race for Vienna? In this variant of his Mediterranean strategy there is a considerable probability that Churchill may have been right. What he, supported by Generals Wilson and Alexander and the British Chiefs of Staff, wanted to do was to omit the invasion of South France, leave the seven divisions which were diverted to South France in Italy and press on up through the Po Valley, Istria and the Ljubljana Gap to Vienna, “very possibly to reach Vienna before the Russians.”⁸² Churchill maintains, once more, that “no one involved in these discussions” ever thought of diverting forces into the Balkans,” though Smuts, who was now in Italy, did suggest on June 23 that after Trieste was captured “the advance will reopen eastward, gathering large Partisan support and perhaps forcing the enemy out of the Balkans.”⁸³

The invasion through Marseilles did not come off until mid-August, and by then the advantages originally expected of it did not apply. However, Churchill himself admits that another line of communication was opened and that Eisenhower did gain another army on his right flank in France.

There were other reasons, also, for the firm adherence of the Americans to the original plan. They had been burned often on Italian campaigns. These always required many more men and much more time than Churchill hoped they would. The Mediterranean detour had already taken up nearly two years and the proposed rush to Vienna appeared to involve a major effort, which might easily compromise the main drive through France. Moreover, there had been an understanding with Stalin at Teheran that the effort in France would be supported by a two-pronged drive. It had also the advantage of more rapidly clearing South France of the Germans and of permitting the seven Free French divisions, newly trained in North Africa, to take part in the liberation of their country. De Gaulle had not even been informed of the Normandy landing until the day before it occurred, so French participation in the liberation was now vital.

The desire of the British to press up through Italy, at full strength, was natural and it may be that they could have reached Vienna ahead of the Russians. There is, however, no certainty that this would have happened and the reasons behind carrying through the long delayed and long debated invasions of France, as planned, were strong indeed. If there was failure in France then indeed the war would be lost, politically and territorially, to the Russians.

Churchill’s Strategy. No one can doubt that Churchill was a great and gallant warrior, and a war leader of the very first rank. As the junior partner of the grand coalition he also had his full share of influence upon strategy. The land fighting of the Western Allies in Europe was confined to the Mediterranean, as he wished, for nearly two years.

On the other hand, the evidence strongly supports the American insistence upon a great cross-Channel attack. There was no “soft underbelly of Europe.” In Italy we had to learn all over again what Hannibal had told us many centuries ago from his own bitter experience. In Italy it was an exceedingly porcupiny and costly undertaking all the way. Yugoslavia would have been as bad geographically. There are almost no ports on the Yugoslav side of the Adriatic and high mountains come down to the sea. Greece and Bulgaria would have provided ideal places for a few Germans to kill large numbers of American and British troops trying to force the narrow valleys which lead northward. The only real hope of getting into the Balkans was through the Turkish Straits, and the Turks were too canny to succumb to Churchill’s efforts to bring them into the war until the very end, though they were Britain’s allies.

Had Turkey entered the war, the supply of goods to Russia through the Straits would have encountered the great hazards of German air power, based on Greece and her islands, all the way through the Aegean to the Straits, then from nearby German bases in Bulgaria. And if all these regions had been mastered, what would we have done then? Would we have been content to send supplies to the Russians, or would we have sent armies this great distance to take over Rumania, while the Russians continued to fight the main German armies? The political impracticability of such an undertaking should be obvious, even if the Russians did not channel their forces to the North and drive through to the North Sea. Even after an invasion of Germany from the West they almost did that.

By contrast there was every reason for making a smashing cross-Channel attack from Britain. Only here could the Allies expect to gain real mastery of the air. A minimum amount of shipping would be required. Britain was an ideal invasion base. Once a footing was gained American strength could be poured in fast, direct from the United States. From Britain, also, British strength could be used far more efficiently than anywhere else. There would be a great economy of lives and resources and time in a powerful attack which would end the war. From Britain the very vitals of German power could be attacked. Even if footholds could be gained in the Balkans we would still be pecking away at the outskirts of Nazi strength. As Eisenhower has observed, “the full might of Great Britain and the United States could not possibly be concentrated in the Mediterranean.” All the laws of logistics were against making the main effort there. The life line to Britain had to be maintained anyway and the U-boat packs in the Atlantic were deadly for a long period. Heavy escorts were necessary to see the ships through. The shortest sea route was to Britain. If the trip had been greatly lengthened, or another route added across the Atlantic, the naval effort required would have been almost prohibitive and the military result at the end of the greatly lengthened line highly questionable, to say the least.⁸⁴

At the very beginning many American military men feared that it might be too costly to storm Hitler’s much vaunted Atlantic Wall, but as soon as the War Plans Division of the War Department made a careful analysis, in March 1942, they came to the conclusion that the cross-Channel invasion must be our main war plan against Germany. When General Marshall had heard the whole thing through, he said: “This is it. I approve.” Admiral King and General Arnold also approved and the President made it the official American plan of war against Germany on April 1, 1942.⁸⁵ From that time on the American leaders resisted the dispersion of our forces around Europe, though unsuccessfully for many months, and they eventually carried through the assault on Normandy on June 6, 1944. But for their everlasting insistence no invasion of Western Europe would ever have occurred. Churchill would have had us spend further years in Mediterranean adventures.

In the abysmal state of enmity and backbiting between the Soviet Union and the West which existed later many Americans concluded that Churchill had been right. Was his purpose not sound and far-sighted? Would not it have been better to have prolonged the war and by getting into the Balkans to have kept the Russians out of Eastern Europe? Would not the whole later impasse in Europe have been prevented? The prospect is alluring until it is remembered that the Nazis could not have been defeated without the immense power of the Red Army. It was the Russian armies which over a space of three years’ time slowly ground to pieces the enormous power of the Wehrmacht.

In November 1943 the Red Army engaged 206 of the 320 German divisions. Of the remainder 50 were in France and the Low Countries, the rest in other parts of West Europe. In June 1944 Hitler still had 157 divisions in the East and in January 1944 there were only 50 divisions opposite Britain, 26 of these absorbed in manning the Atlantic Wall. “Of the rest, a dozen were either newly formed training divisions, or exhausted skeletons from the Russian front, and others were being steadily milked to provide drafts for the East.” On April 14, 1944, our Intelligence estimated 199 German divisions on the Eastern Front and 137 elsewhere, including 51 in France and the Low Countries. In September 1944 the Germans were still using 52 divisions in the West, “but many of these were divisions in name only.” By January 1945 the Russians were engaging 133 German divisions, half the total German ground forces, and the Allies 100 divisions, 76 in the West and 24 in Italy.⁸⁶

These figures make it clear that the power of the Red Army was the great central military fact of the war in Europe. Most of the myths surrounding World War II begin by ignoring this controlling consideration. Because of it Churchill’s yearning to keep the Russians out of the Balkans made no more sense politically than it did militarily. While depending upon the Russians to destroy the German armies we could not push up through the Balkans and meet the Russians in Eastern Europe, thank them for their noble efforts and send them back to Moscow without the accomplishment of their great war objective, the permanent closing of the invasion routes through Eastern Europe into Russia. The Red leaders were not that simple. Besides, the German armies would still have remained in control of most of Europe, powerful and undestroyed. Churchill could not achieve as a political generalissimo what Chamberlain had failed to win as a pacifist appeaser. It was impossible now to bring about a military Munich which would compensate for the failure of the diplomatic Munich. What had been deliberately thrown away in 1938 could not now be recovered by military-political legerdemain.

It does not require deep military knowledge to know that the American plan of concentrating on the main enemy, Germany, first was eternally sound. Otherwise, Hitler might well win the war while we were cleaning up his lesser allies. The same principle applies also to the method of defeating him. There was no easy, roundabout way to destroy so great an enemy. Direct assault by the easiest geographic route was required. As Eisenhower observed, “between the coast line of northeast Europe and the border of Germany there was no natural obstacle to compare in importance with the Alps.”⁸⁷ In other words, why butt our heads against the mountain walls of South Europe?

It is true that the Mediterranean detour gave our troops battle experience. That was an advantage. It also ensured British-American control of the Mediterranean, but that would have come anyway as a by-product of victory over the main enemy. With Germany put out of the war Italy would not have needed to be conquered, foot by foot, and the German troops in Africa, if not already accounted for, would have been little more dangerous than the Japanese armies we by-passed in the South Pacific.

Churchill was the most clever and determined political strategist of the century. It was this characteristic which made his military strategy unreliable and dangerous.

A Thrust to Berlin? The long arguments over strategy between the Americans and the British did not end when France was invaded. On the contrary, they became even more acrimonious, with each side sincerely sure that it was right. There were differences about the best way to take the Ruhr,⁸⁸ but the greatest clash centered on the British desire for the Allies to take Berlin. On September 4, 1944, soon after the liberation of Paris on August 25, General Montgomery proposed to Eisenhower that if the Americans would support his Twenty-first Army Group with all available supplies he “could rush right on to Berlin and, he said, end the war.”⁸⁹

This was hardly a practical proposition at the time, but as the war neared its end, Churchill had already decided, he says in his Memoirs, “that Russia had become a mortal danger to the free world,” and that she must be stopped as far East as possible, especially before she took Berlin.⁹⁰ The execution of this policy meant, in effect, that the Western Allies should hurry to take as much territory as possible while the Germans held the Russians as long as they could. Actually, Hitler tried to hold both fronts and he counter-attacked the Americans heavily in the Battle of the Bulge late in December 1944. Then he reinforced the East to hold the Russians as long as possible. For example, during February 1945 he sent 1675 new or repaired tanks and assault guns to the East and only 67 to the West. Thereafter the Germans held a new defense line along the Oder-Niesse rivers and a stable line through Hungary and Austria, while the Russians could not attack until they had restored communications through devastated Poland.⁹¹

This was the general situation late in March when General Eisenhower decided to make his main thrust from Kassel through central Germany to the Leipzig-Dresden area, with the object of cutting Germany in two and linking up with the Russians on the Elbe. He reasoned that Berlin was still 300 miles away, but only 30 miles from the lines of the Russians, where Marshal Zhukov now had a bridgehead across the Oder and a million men under his command.

If he made a dash for Berlin the Russians would in all probability get there first. Even if the Allies crossed the Oder they would still have to cross fifty miles of lowlands filled with lakes, streams and canals. General Omar Bradley estimated that the storming of this region would cost 100,000 casualties and he could see no compensatory “political advantage accruing from the capture of Berlin that would offset the need for quick destruction of the German army on our front.”⁹² Anyhow, whatever territory Eisenhower occupied beyond the Elbe would have to be returned to Russian occupation according to the zones of occupation agreement drawn up by the European Advisory Commission in London during November 1944 and ratified at Yalta. This agreement on occupation zones was based on a British draft, which the Russians accepted without argument, including the designation of Berlin, deep in their zone, as a separate area of joint Allied occupation.⁹³

Eisenhower was not bound in pursuing the Germans by any “stop line.” No such line had been agreed upon at Yalta, or even discussed. He decided on strictly military grounds that a thrust for Berlin would leave most of the other units along the remainder of his front practically immobilized and he thought that would be “more than unwise; it was stupid.”⁹⁴

On the other hand, a thrust through central Germany would enable both wings to advance and also to cut off the Southern Redoubt territory where it was widely believed, though erroneously, that the Nazis were preparing a huge mountain fortress for final resistance. At the time this was a serious prospect for the Americans, since it might postpone indefinitely the turn about of our forces toward the Japanese war.

For these reasons Eisenhower decided on the central advance and on March 28, 1945, notified London, Washington and Moscow, since he had been authorized to exchange operational plans with the Russians. Churchill at once made a vehement protest by telephone, asserting that Eisenhower did not have authority to notify Stalin, that political considerations should now determine the advance of the armies and that Berlin should be captured as a counterbalance to the forthcoming Russian capture of Vienna. He insisted in cables to Washington that at Malta it had been agreed that Montgomery should advance in the North. This was denied by Eisenhower, who maintained that from D-Day on his plan had not changed. It had been precisely what was now proposed. Eisenhower stood firm, “staunchly supported by superiors and subordinates alike,” and went forward to meet the Russians on the Elbe.⁹⁵

After Roosevelt’s death Churchill renewed his plea to President Truman that Eisenhower’s armies continue advancing into the Russian zone of occupation, and that they should stay there unless Stalin agreed to a pooling of all German food resources. Truman held that the Allies must fulfill their commitments.⁹⁶

After the Cold War began, the decisions of General Eisenhower concerning Berlin and Prague were much condemned, especially after the Berlin blockade in 1948. Yet he wisely avoided precisely the kind of early clash between the victors which Hitler was striving to bring about. On April 21, when it became apparent that the Russian-American junction was likely to be effected near Dresden, Hitler ordered the German forces on both sides of the Elbe to withdraw toward Berlin “and thus accelerate the expected Soviet-American clash.” Three days later Himmler offered to surrender unconditionally in the West while continuing to fight the Russians.⁹⁷ But the hopes of the Nazis were not realized. The Russians took Berlin on May 2. There was no Allied clash and Nazi Germany ceased to exist.

Nor is any sober view of the whole story of World War II likely to reach the conclusion that it should have been otherwise. The Allies were wise to fix their occupation zones in advance, and to adhere to them. They could not go charging across Germany, racing for territory, even if trouble over the disposition of Germany might lie in the future. If, also, any one of the Allies had earned the right to take Berlin, it was Russia. She had supplied the vast bulk of the blood required to crush Hitlerism. She could not be denied an occupation zone in Germany on any ground, and if she was to have one in East Germany Berlin would be in it. Churchill could not at the last moment snatch back what Chamberlain had given away at Munich, especially since the British had postponed the invasion of Germany until the last day in the evening.

There was a way by which the American and British armies could have met the Russian armies in Eastern Europe, honorably and without offense even to the Russians. If the Western Allies had invaded France in 1943, their armies would have had a good chance to sweep through Germany into Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria. The German lines in Russia were stretched very thin and their lines of communication were very long There was also one American strategist who argued for invading Europe in 1943 to keep the Slavs out. General Albert Wedemeyer contended that the Pacific war should be subordinated in order to “put all our emphasis on getting right at the heartland of Germany so that it would be Anglo-American forces that overran Europe and not Slavic forces.” Others argued that we could not cross the Channel in 1943. He “did not agree with them” and the Slavs did overrun Eastern Europe.⁹⁸

It remains to be proved that there was any other way to prevent the Russians from coming into Central Europe. It is true that the Allies needed another year to wear down the German air strength and to master the deadly submarine campaign, which destroyed 6,000,000 tons of shipping during 1942 and reached another climax in March 1943 with 514,744 tons sunk, of which 400,000 were in convoy. By mid-1943 the U-boats were under control and four new ships were being completed for each one sunk.⁹⁹ Time was needed, also, for the building of the indispensable landing craft, large numbers of which were required in the Pacific.

The long wait for the Normandy invasion can be amply justified on the ground of making it a fairly sure operation. On the other hand, if all the resources used in Africa and the Mediterranean had been thrown into Western Europe in 1943 Churchill might well have been able to meet the Russians in Eastern Europe and been greeted by them warmly and with great relief, but having elected to wait until mid-1944 to invade Germany the Allies could not then claim an extra share of Germany at the last minute. Churchill could not have it both ways. Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe were then in Russian hands, by virtue of hard fighting with no detours.

Churchill’s Last Charge. Yet as the fighting ended early in May 1945 Churchill waged another all-out campaign to retain possession of the large sector of Russia’s zone of occupation in Germany, which the Western allies had overrun with the aid of the Nazis—together with similar strips of territory in Austria and Czechoslovakia—until a long list of his political aims should have been achieved.

Before our troops pulled back into their own agreed zones he wanted agreements from the Russians to share their anticipated food surplus in East Germany, and about everything else—“the temporary character of the Russian occupation of Germany,” the Soviet control of Poland, and “the conditions to be established in the Russianized or Russian-controlled countries of the Danube . . . and the Balkans.”¹⁰⁰

In other words, he still wanted to retrieve the Munich losses by holding the Russians out of the occupation zones assigned to them by agreement, and by military pressure, until they accepted his terms for the future Europe. He wanted to “hold firmly,” and on May 11 and 12 he urged upon President Truman a prompt meeting with Stalin, before the American armies receded further.¹⁰¹

Fortunately, none of the American leaders was “open to these importunities.” The new President and his aides agreed that Churchill’s last-ditch proposals would only provoke a harsh dispute with the Soviets, instead of leading to more favorable settlements; that they would be ineffective, because the Russians could retaliate by shutting us out of Berlin and Vienna; and that they were impractical because American opinion would not accept holding the troops in Europe for such doubtful ends.¹⁰² Besides, our soldiers were already on the move toward Japan and the dangerous course Churchill proposed risked Soviet entry into the war against Japan in time to spare us great loss and suffering. This was now Washington’s main political objective, and rightly so, even though it was later discovered that Russia was not needed to defeat Japan.

The role which we wished the Russians to play in the Japanese war was comparable to their long demand that we take a big segment of the German army from their backs. During Churchill’s visit to Moscow in October 1944 he had heard General Deane explain to Stalin the five tasks we wanted the Russians to perform, “as soon as possible and in all available strength.” They included air attacks on Japan; cutting her off from the continent, by sea and air; and the destruction of the Japanese ground and air forces in Manchuria.¹⁰³ The aid we desired from Russia was massive and we continued to want it until the first test A-bomb was exploded, on July 16, 1945, after the Potsdam Conference began.

Military Cooperation with Russia. What is to be said about the military cooperation between the Soviets and the West, apart from the overriding issue of the Second Front? In lesser matters it was seldom smooth and usually vexatious. Major General John R. Deane, head of our military mission to the Soviet Union after Faymonville’s recall, has left a full record of his difficulties.¹⁰⁴ Nevertheless, the primary objective of his mission, to obtain Soviet participation in the war against Japan, was attained. This was a matter of the greatest importance to the President and the Chiefs of Staff.

Russia’s long delay in fighting Japan was a constant source of controversy in the United States. The isolationist and anti-Russian elements among our people constantly asked why Russia did not fight Japan, especially whenever the Second Front question was mentioned. They argued that Russia was holding out on us. There was just as much reason for her to fight in Asia as for us to fight in Europe. If they wanted a Second Front let them set the example.

The reply to this argument was that Russia’s margin of superiority over the German Army was not large enough to warrant any diversion in the Far East, especially since the fighting fronts would have been several thousands of miles apart. Nothing could have imperilled the war in Europe more than a full-scale Japanese assault upon Siberia, since that would also have closed the main route for lend-lease supplies to Russia, over which one half of that vital traffic moved. It was to the advantage of all the Allies that the chief enemy be dealt with first. At the Moscow Conference on October 30, 1943, Stalin voluntarily promised Hull to join in defeating Japan when Germany had been conquered. Thereafter the problem was to prevent a Japanese attack upon Russia until the main operation had been completed.

This necessity complicated the release of many American airmen who had to land in Soviet territory in connection with their belligerent duties in the Far East. They were allowed to “escape” quietly into Persia in groups.

In general the Russians wanted as few of their Allies in their country as possible. Weather equipment would be accepted but not American personnel to install it. Yet the exchange of weather information was steadily broadened, both in Europe and Asia. The Russians were extremely reluctant to grant visas to British personnel to proceed to Murmansk, alleging that those already there engaged in spying, were troublesome during their long periods of unemployment, and did not treat the Russians as equals.¹⁰⁵ Eden had to iron out these difficulties in Moscow.

Our planes were not permitted to fly into the Soviet Union except to bring very important dignitaries. The Soviets were reluctant to give us bases for shuttle bombing across Germany. When finally they had agreed to do so, centralization of authority, understaffing and pride greatly slowed the process. They were horrified at American insistence upon the control of communications for the project. Still it proceeded. The Russian soldiers went into raptures when the American equipment was finally unloaded at Poltava. Russian women were proud that the great steel mat which they had laid held up under the great American bombers. All of the Russians were deeply mortified when an early German night raid destroyed fifty flying fortresses on the ground. They would not let the Americans go among the hundreds of small contact bombs dropped by the Germans and thirty of their men were killed trying to put out fires. Afterwards “there were no recriminations on either side.”¹⁰⁶

There were difficulties about establishing bomb lines, to separate the Allied and Russian zones of air activity, until an accident occurred and a Russian Lieutenant General was killed. In the Far East the Soviets resisted for a long time the flying of lend-lease planes into Siberia, compelling transfers in Alaska.

It was just as difficult to secure cooperation when the Russians were the sole beneficiaries. When we turned the Norden bomb-sight over to them they were very slow to permit instruction in its use. Always and forever there was the memory of the long decades of hostility between the Soviet Union and the West, and especially of the treachery of German engineers in Russia before 1941. Yet there was much warm cooperation between the members of the two armed forces on a man to man basis. From the airmen particularly, “we encountered nothing but a spirit of friendliness and cooperation,” from the top down to the lowliest man.¹⁰⁷

In the most important matters the Russians cooperated to the full. They kept their word to come into the Japanese war, in full strength, three months after VE-Day. By August 1945 their aid in this theater was not crucial to us, but their final coordination with us in destroying the German armies was. Here also they kept their word to the letter. At Teheran Stalin had promised that the Red Army would undertake great offensives against the Germans at the time of overlord and “demonstrate by its actions” the importance it attached to the operation.

After waiting through so many life-and-death struggles for overlord to come, the Russians did not then ease up and let the Anglo-Americans carry the brunt a while; they attacked with their full strength and kept the bulk of the German armies so busy that they could detach no strength to meet our onslaught in the West. They played their part so stoutly that the Western commanders were not only appreciative but impressed with the reliability of Stalin’s word.¹⁰⁸

Italy Kept Conservative

In Italy the government of Marshal Badoglio, which was formed after Mussolini’s fall, on July 25, 1943, sought to preserve the monarchy and to extricate Italy from the war. It succeeded in getting an armistice with the Allies, on September 3, but lost possession of Mussolini and most of Italy to the Germans within a few days thereafter. The King and the Badoglio government then fled behind the Allied lines and declared war on Germany.

Since most Italian army officers were royalists the Allies hesitated to support the strong popular demand for the King’s abdication, even when it was demanded on December 14, 1943, by the Committee of National Liberation, composed of six pre-war political parties. Count Sforza, aged pre-Mussolini liberal exile, returned to Italy from the United States and denounced Victor Emmanuel as “a stupid, vile, abject criminal monarch,” but Churchill gave the King his full support in an address on February 22, 1944.

At this point the Soviet Union, which was a party to the Italian armistice, exchanged ambassadors with the Badoglio government on March 13, apparently to better its bargaining position and to prepare the way for the return of Palmino Togliatti, able Italian Communist leader who had been in exile in Moscow during the Fascist era.

On April 12 the King entrusted his powers to Crown Prince Umberto, and Badoglio was able to form a coalition ministry with all of the six CNL parties represented, including the Communists. After the capture of Rome, on June 4, 1944, a new Bonomi cabinet swore allegiance to the country, instead of the King, while many high British and American officials were assured by the wealthy classes and ecclesiastics who entertained them that the abolition of the monarchy would be followed by social revolution. William C. Bullitt spoke for these groups in an article in Life, September 4, 1944, in which he suggested that “Rome” and the “Vatican” hoped for war between the Soviet Union and the West within a few years, though they feared the West might surrender Italy and Europe without a fight.

Responding partly to their own conservative outlook, the Anglo-American officials deferred social and economic reform and instead of welcoming the Italian resistance fighters in the North as brothers who had done splendid service against the enemy, they disarmed them wherever possible as republicans and Reds who might cause trouble.

On November 28, 1944, the British Ambassador precipitated a crisis by attempting to exclude Count Sforza from a new cabinet. On December 5, Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., issued a statement in Washington which disavowed any part in the British move, saying that “we have reaffirmed to both the British and Italian Governments that we expect the Italians to work out their problems of government along democratic lines without influence from the outside. This policy would apply to an even more pronounced degree with regard to Governments of the United Nations in their liberated territory.”

This statement by the new American Secretary of State stirred Churchill to “furious and vehemently expressed wrath.” The last sentence about leaving the liberated United Nations to work out their own problems struck Churchill in several vulnerable spots. It was bad enough to be disavowed in his royalist activity in ex-enemy Italy, but he was also being accused of restoring royalist and conservative control in Belgium and he was most certainly doing it in Greece. The cable he dispatched to Roosevelt was probably “the most violent outburst of rage” in their long correspondence. He went to the House of Commons and demanded a vote of confidence to assuage his wounds, but Ambassador Winant reported that the vote did not reflect the extent of a deeply troubled British public opinion.¹⁰⁹

Since the Greek and Polish cauldrons were also boiling, Roosevelt sent soothing cables to both Churchill and Stalin. His indispensable and crucial role as a friendly but firm mediator would not be appreciated by his countrymen until after he was gone.

Churchill’s determination was so great that he succeeded in excluding Sforza from the new Bonomi cabinet and in breaking the unity of the CNL parties who opposed the monarchy. Nevertheless, public pressure for a republic grew steadily until April 27, 1946, when the Congress of Premier Alcide de Gasperi’s Catholic Christian Democratic Party voted three to one in favor of abolishing the throne.

This event led Victor Emmanuel to abdicate formally in favor of Humbert, on May 9, and go to Egypt. On June 2 a national referendum was held and the republic won, 12,719,284 to 10,719,923. Ten days later Humbert sailed for Spain, leaving behind him a ruined and impoverished land in which millions of people still hung on the border line of starvation, in spite of many hundreds of millions in relief supplies from the West.

The monarchy was gone, but the old social structure, with its abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, had been successfully preserved, along with the suffocating birth-rate which ensured for Italy a future of permanent poverty and perpetual crisis.

Greece Restored to the Royalists

On December 3, 1944, Churchill’s effort to regain control of Greece came to a head in the outbreak of civil war in Athens. For sixty-three days British armed forces bore the brunt of the fighting until the leftist forces of EAM were finally driven from the capital. Elliott Roosevelt relates that when the news reached Washington he found his father scowling and muttering at the newspapers in anger that British troops should be used to fight the Greek guerrillas, who had fought the Nazis for four years.¹¹⁰

This development was the climax of a long struggle for the control of Greece after the war. It has been simply and objectively described by a young American historian who saw the Elas-British war in 1944 and remained in Greece as an Assistant Military Attaché until June 1946. William H. McNeill’s book, The Greek Dilemma, is well supported by other accounts.¹¹¹

After the dethronement of King George II in March 1924 Greece was a republic until the royalist Popular Party captured the government and brought the King back in November 1935. Then new elections in June 1936 produced such an equilibrium of royalist and Republican forces that fifteen Communist deputies held the balance of power. This situation, plus rumors of a Communist-led general strike, enabled General John Metaxas, a brilliant military man, to persuade the King to dissolve the Parliament and give him dictatorial powers. His government was vigorous, and successful in building up the army. It was harsh, fascist and unpopular, but it did prepare for the epic resistance which the Greeks made to Italian invasion in 1940. The amazing morale of the Greeks, fighting very individualistically, hurled the Italians back into Albania. In few instances during World War II did men fight more to the limit of endurance than did the Greeks in this war, only to be overwhelmed in April 1941 by the immense weight of the German Army.

Threatened with submergence, Metaxas called on the British to honor Chamberlain’s guarantee of Greece, and Churchill quickly responded. In Greece he did not suffer from fears of another Dunkirk and of great carnage. The victorious British Army in Egypt, which had just defeated the Italians, was broken up and 60,000 men sent to Greece, where the vanguard was welcomed wildly in Athens, on March 4, 1941. By late April the British had been defeated in the passes near Mt. Olympus and their evacuation from Greece roughly handled by German aircraft. The Germans swept on into Crete a month later, largely by air. The British suffered 30,000 casualties.

Metaxas had died in January. His successor and the King fled abroad with a few officials and formed the Greek Government in Exile, while a Quisling general headed a puppet government in Athens.

German Rule. In the cities the wealthy and conservative classes generally, though not universally, collaborated with the Germans and Italians, especially in Athens. There some 20,000 people in the Kolonaki district, the most fashionable suburb, lived in luxury all during the Axis occupation, while the nation suffered and starved. The Kolonaki came through it all fat and with well-filled houses and cellars.¹¹²

The Germans ruled Greece by terror, shooting fifty Greeks for every German killed, until the collapse of Italy removed a large part of the occupation armies and left the resistance forces in the hills increasing scope. The guerrillas were then combated largely by Security Battalions of conservative Greeks—organized by the Germans. Both sides punished the villages savagely for allegedly helping the other.

Resistance Organized. By the middle of 1942 dozens of guerrilla bands had formed spontaneously in the hills. Two of the original leaders of small bands came eventually to lead large forces. Zervas, a Republican, commanded five thousand men in Western Greece by the end of 1943. His army, called EDES, was backed by a group of politicians and business men in Athens who made little headway in building up a mass following. The guerrilla leader Ares was more fortunate in his backing. The Communist Party, under the able leadership of George Santos, founded a political movement called EAM, which enlisted a great mass following, composed especially of the youth and women. The latter were given equality for the first time and responded enthusiastically. After cells had been formed in the whole of Central Greece a guerrilla force was gradually built up, called ELAS, which numbered twenty thousand by the summer of 1943. Both EDES and ELAS received support from a British military mission of three colonels, which had been dropped into the country in 1942. A royalist guerrilla group under Colonel George Grivas, the “X” band, secured arms from German and Italian sources and conducted street fights with ELAS in Athens. “The energy and enthusiasm mobilized by EAM was tremendous. Most of its members were inspired by honest and lofty motives and profoundly believed in the righteousness of their cause.”¹¹³

EAM’s program called for active resistance to the Germans, a resistance government, restoration of all popular liberties and free elections for a constituent assembly. In accord with the dominant mood of the people the movement became anti-royalist. A real state, centering in the Pindus Mountains, was set up which ruled nearly all of Greece, except the Epirus district controlled by EDES, in spite of the enemy. ELAS headquarters cooperated reluctantly in a British-inspired campaign of sabotage late in 1943 which compelled the Germans to send additional divisions to Greece. The numerous British liaison officers by-passed the ELAS command and used their bands directly. When Italy surrendered, ELAS took ten thousand rifles from an Italian division and was thereafter independent of British support. The British then threw all their aid to EDES, but ELAS grew still more rapidly. EDES was attacked and a see-saw war resulted in a delimitation of territories. EDES now changed its political complexion from Republican to Conservative-Nationalist, while ELAS organized reserve forces in the cities. In March 1944 an EAM provisional government was formally set up.

Mutiny in Egypt. After wandering to South Africa, the United States and England, the Greek Government in Exile came back to Cairo in May 1943. For military reasons its communications with Greece were tightly controlled by British censorship. Its army, composed mainly of émigré officers from Greece and of urban Greeks conscripted from Egypt, was plagued with idleness and rebellion. In the spring of 1943 a Republican mutiny led to the purge of many Metaxist officers. New recruits from Greece, including some EAM organizers, were nearly all anti-royalist. A rising demand that the King promise not to return until after a plebiscite was rebuffed and, supported by London, the King refused to agree to a regency. At the same time some delegates from EAM appeared in Cairo with a request for representation in their government. Instead of being received as representatives of the only large body of Greeks fighting the enemy, they were greeted with harsh words, locked up and then shipped ignominiously back to Greece.¹¹⁴ These events led the Republican League to give orders for a mutiny on April 1, 1944, which tied up all of the ships in the Greek Navy at Alexandria and spread to all units of the Army except the Royalist Sacred Squadron. The mutineers demanded that the Provisional Government established by EAM in Greece be accepted as the legitimate government. As the British Ambassador in Egypt reported, on April 7, it was “nothing less than a revolution.”

Churchill took personal charge of its suppression, sending frequent orders until it was over. The ships were gradually subdued one by one by Greek boarding parties, backed by British warships, and the First Brigade of the Army surrendered after an eighteen-day siege by British troops, ended by smoke screens and some bombardment. Nearly ten thousand mutineers, more than half of the Greek forces in the Middle East, were segregated and imprisoned by the British in desert camps and kept prisoner until after the British occupation of Greece. Late in 1945, 1500 of these Greeks were still in a British prison camp in remote Eritrea.¹¹⁵ It was these large bodies of Greeks which Churchill spoke of on May 24, 1945, as interned “for the time being.”¹¹⁶

Immediately after the mutiny, General Vendiras, who was bitterly anti-Communist, organized a new Third Brigade, often called the Mountain Brigade, with British backing, on a purely royalist basis.¹¹⁷ This new Rightist brigade is the force which Churchill persisted in referring to later as “the Greek Brigade which had mutinied earlier in the year, but had now been freed of its mutinous element.”¹¹⁸

In Greece EAM had swept nearly the whole country. It had a membership of two millions, out of seven millions. “There was a tremendous buoyancy and faith in the EAM movement.” Its members meant to make the country over, without benefit of royalty. There was “an element of religious crusade in it.” In Athens the alarmed Conservatives began to back the X band and to revive the dream of territorial expansion, “Greater Greece,” an effective diversion against the friendship with Greece’s northern neighbors advocated by EAM.¹¹⁹

Lebanon Agreement. By this time there was no middle ground in Greek political life, but George Papandreou convinced the British that he could unite both Right and Left and was made Prime Minister after the mutiny. On May 17, 1944, a conference was held at Beirut in the Lebanon attended by twenty-five delegates who represented nearly all the parties and resistance organizations of Greece. EAM was represented by six men. Only one was a communist. The so-called Lebanon Charter which resulted was a compromise document which could be interpreted both ways. Early in September five EAM ministers entered the Greek Cabinet in Cairo, though they were swamped by fifteen of Papandreou’s appointees, none of whom had any constituencies.

Simultaneously, the EAM Provisional Government in Greece was formally dissolved. At once Papandreou feigned illness and went secretly to Italy to discuss the liberation of Greece with Churchill. This move led the Liberal ministers to resign from the Cabinet, expecting that the EAM ministers would join forces with them. However, on the advice of the Russian Minister to Egypt they did not do so. McNeill does not believe EAM had any advice or contact with the Soviet Union up to this time, other than the fifty Moscow-trained communists who first went into EAM, but he believes that EAM would have swung Greece into the Russian orbit had it been the post-war government.¹²⁰

Caserta Pact. In September the Greek Government moved to Salerno, Italy, and late in that month a conference was held at Caserta at which the commanders of ELAS and EDES agreed that they would not attempt to seize power at the time of the liberation. They both acknowledged the Papandreou Government, which in turn put all Greek forces under the command of British General Scobie. The collaborationist Security Battalions were outlawed. However, an operational order by Scobie placed the Athens district under the command of a Conservative Nationalist General.¹²¹

ELAS Ordered Disarmed. At the end of September British troops landed in Greece and were greeted with wild enthusiasm. The Government reached Athens on October 18 and by the 30th the German evacuation of Greece was complete. Then political tension began to grow. In Athens the Rightists founded newspapers which campaigned in very strong language, and EAM staged large demonstrations. The Rightists quickly demanded that ELAS should be disarmed and disbanded. EAM agreed, but insisted that the Royalist Mountain Brigade, which had now arrived from Italy should also be disbanded. Otherwise, the Government resting on it would be able to recall the King. EAM did not propose to have its years of hard work, suffering and triumphant organization nullified in this manner.

On the other hand, the Right insisted that the Mountain Brigade be retained in service and was backed in this by the British Ambassador, Sir Reginald Leeper, on orders from Churchill.¹²² General Scobie ordered ELAS to disband by December 10. He certainly exceeded his powers greatly in attempting to abolish the principal force put under his command, but when the ELAS commander refused Scobie issued a proclamation ordering the rank and file of ELAS to disband. Denying that the Greek Government had ever sanctioned such an order, the EAM ministers resigned from the Government on December 2.

This was the specific issue. Behind it was an accumulation of grievances. On November 22 General Scobie had summoned the EAM ministers of Finance and Agriculture, the latter a communist, and in the presence of Ambassador Leeper had lectured them on two points. First, the proposed wage scale was too high, and second, he demanded within 24 hours a declaration by them that they were opposed to acts of violence.¹²³ By this time Papandreou’s vacillation had become intolerable to most of the cabinet and it was clear that he was a complete puppet to Leeper, consulting him “on every issue.”¹²⁴

General Scobie’s order to ELAS to disband forced EAM to make decisions. Papandreou’s obvious drift, under the firm hand of Leeper, was plainly toward restoring Rightist control in Greece. Eight out of fourteen officers appointed, on November 24, to organize the new National Guard had been former officers of the German-organized Security Battalions. There was no move to punish Quislings and traitors. Thousands of collaborators roamed the streets freely and many others in high office were not disturbed.¹²⁵ Now if ELAS gave up its arms, reaction would be intrenched, and without a struggle. EAM therefore called a great demonstration for Sunday morning, December 3, ordered a general strike on December 4, and called up the ELAS reserve in Athens.

Bloody Sunday. Papandreou gave permission for the Sunday demonstration. However, the extensive EAM preparations alarmed the British leaders and at a conference shortly before midnight on Saturday they directed Papandreou to withdraw permission for the demonstration. He attempted to do so, but it was far too late for the EAM leaders to cancel the demonstration, since most of their people, coming from the entire Athens area, did not have radios or telephones and many of them were already on the way. Nor did EAM wish to cancel the meeting.

On Sunday morning scores of thousands of marchers, with many banners and posters, filled all the streets of the city leading toward Constitution Square. They were mostly women and children, since the men were occupied in organizing the general strike and the ELAS reserve. The marchers were completely unarmed and they advanced in a mixed mood of anger and holiday excitement, precipitating great fear in the police, who formed cordons across all of the entries into Constitution Square. About 10:30 a.m. the great pressure of the crowds broke one of these police lines and several hundred angry people streamed across the Square toward police headquarters, where a score of policemen took refuge behind a stone wall. While they vacillated, a man in military uniform suddenly ran out of the police building, shouting “Shoot the bastards,” and began firing into the crowd. The police then did likewise. They had orders only to use blanks, but one or two guns—perhaps that of the military man—had live ammunition. Seven people were killed and as many wounded. Soon afterward the police lines disintegrated, a few policemen being torn limb from limb, and the Square was filled by the enraged crowds, carrying a few Russian, many Greek, and vast numbers of American flags, shouting “Roosevelt! Roosevelt!” When a company of British paratroopers appeared on the scene, the sixty thousand people jammed into the Square showed no hostility to them, and with remarkable good humor allowed themselves to be herded out.¹²⁶

The shooting into the unarmed crowd precipitated civil war. The ELAS committee ordered all police stations attacked and British troops went to the relief of those which held out. The X band was saved from extermination by British troops. In neither case did ELAS resist the British. There was still time for a political settlement to prevent full-scale war.¹²⁷

Churchill Adamant. On Monday morning, December 4, Papandreou resigned and in the afternoon there was general agreement among the political leaders that the liberal leader, Themistocles Sofoulis, should head the new Government, though the vital question of what share EAM should have was not settled. At this juncture it was constitutionally necessary to secure the assent of King George who was in London. George, however, was not allowed to decide. Churchill did it for him. The British Prime Minister was “adamant against any concession to EAM.” He ruled that Papandreou must stay, and the latter agreed quickly enough; Churchill would not permit the Greeks to avoid a bloody civil war, in which British troops would settle the issue. He knew that a Sofoulis Cabinet would make King George’s chances of returning to Greece very slim, but above all he was determined to exclude EAM from the Government, fearing that otherwise they would soon take it over.¹²⁸

Churchill wrote to Eden on November 7: “having paid the price to Russia for freedom of action in Greece, we should not hesitate to use British troops.” He hoped also that the Royalist Greek Brigade, which would arrive soon, would “not hesitate to shoot when necessary.” Concluding, he said: “I fully expect a clash with E.A.M. and we must not shrink from it, providing the ground is well chosen.”¹²⁹

This was not far from saying that proper ground for a clash should be sought. The clash came when General Scobie banned the demonstration on December 3, after it was too late to stop it. In the early hours of December 5 Churchill sent his famous telegram to Scobie, charging him with responsibility “for neutralizing or destroying all E.A.M.-E.L.A.S. bands approaching the city.” He should “not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.” It would be a great thing if he could “hold and dominate Athens” without bloodshed, “but also with bloodshed if necessary.”¹³⁰

EAM Conquered. The London Times made the situation clear on December 7, saying: “although the British Government was perfectly justified in exerting pressure and even using its armed forces to keep in office in Athens a national coalition government representing all parties, once this Greek Government had ceased to be fully representative through the resignation of the E.A.M. ministers, it was a mistake to continue to support Premier Papandreou, because such support inevitably assumed the appearances of supporting conservative elements against Left-Wing groups.”

Early on December 6, ELAS reservists tried to capture the Government buildings, but found British sentries posted around them. This nonplussed most of the attackers, but there was some shooting in which the British joined. British airplanes then strafed Ardettos Hill, and by this action consolidated most of the wavering EAM moderates behind communist leadership. There was some negotiation with General Scobie up to December 12, but he offered no terms. The British arrested large numbers of people on suspicion of sniping and transported many of them to North Africa. When it was reported that 14,500 people had been seized for this purpose,¹³¹ ELAS took 15,000 supposed Rightist sympathizers and marched them out of Athens toward the north. The brutality of their guards and the rigors of the march killed about 4000 of these people, an event which did much to cause EAM swiftly to lose its majority support in the nation.

The British successfully defended the districts in which most of the well-to-do Athenians lived and brought in about three divisions of troops, largely by air. Vast districts in which the poor lived were gradually conquered, block by block. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, usually containing homes of the poorer people of Athens, at least eighty per cent of whom were on the side of EAM. The property damage approached $250,000,000. Casualties ranged between two and five thousand. No damage was done in the Kolonaki district.¹³²

The British conquest of Athens produced such a big wave of indignation in Great Britain, the United States and elsewhere that Churchill felt compelled to fly to Athens on Christmas Day 1944 to see if he could compose matters. He now advanced General Nicholas Plastiras in the place of his faithful Papandreou. Plastiras would concede no terms to EAM.

After scolding the Greeks in an ill-tempered fashion, threatening to put them under some sort of international trusteeship if they did not quickly lay “democratic foundations which are satisfactory and inspire confidence,” Churchill flew back to London to tell King George that he would have to accept a Regency and to order the British generals in Greece into a full-scale offensive, which began the next day, December 27. By January 11 ELAS was forced to sue for terms and an armistice was concluded, the so-called Varkiza Agreement, on February 12. By its terms ELAS agreed to surrender definite quotas of weapons in all parts of Greece. Actually they exceeded the quotas everywhere, though they secreted many of their best weapons. The other parts of the Varkiza Agreement, which would have prevented a Rightist terror from sweeping Greece, quickly lapsed. Rightist elements filled all the armed forces, Quislings and traitors included; the “X” band was greatly expanded; Zervas, who had been defeated in the civil war, recovered his power. All these forces, plus other Rightist bands, hunted and killed Leftists throughout the British occupation and deep into the American period.¹³³

Russia Acquiescent. At this point it is pertinent to inquire what Russia was doing while the communist-led forces of the Left were being crushed in Greece. The answer was given in a letter from Churchill to Roosevelt, dated March 8, which was quoted by former Secretary of State Byrnes in the New York Times of October 18, 1947. Said Churchill: “We have been hampered in our protests against elections in Eastern Europe by the fact that in order to have freedom to save Greece, Eden and I at Moscow in October (1944) recognized that Russia should have a largely preponderant voice in Rumania and Bulgaria while we took the lead in Greece. Stalin adhered very strictly to this understanding during the thirty days’ fighting against the Communists and ELAS in the city of Athens, in spite of the fact that all this was most disagreeable to him and those around him.”

Churchill also records that though the two leading British newspapers censured his policy in Greece, Stalin “adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement of October, and during all the long weeks of fighting the Communists in the streets of Athens not one word of reproach came from Pravda or Isvestia.”¹³⁴

The British-Russian agreement that Britain should have a free hand in Greece, and Russia in Bulgaria and Rumania, and the way Stalin lived up to it when it was applied in Greece is pertinent to the later American-British effort to enforce “free and unfettered elections” in Bulgaria and Rumania. It is essential to remember that Greece was the first of the liberated states to be openly and forcibly compelled to accept the political system of the occupying Great Power. It was Churchill who acted first and Stalin who followed his example, in Bulgaria and then in Rumania, though with less bloodshed.

Issues Involved

Churchill’s bloody and wholesale intervention in the political affairs of Greece left many questions to trouble the future.

1. Was the Greek Government-in-Exile legitimate? It was, in the sense that the King was the titular head of the State at the time of the German invasion. Actually he had lost his right to be a constitutional monarch by creating the Fascist dictatorship of General Metaxas. Because of this he was hated by a large majority of his people.

In Africa, he and his ministers became mere puppets in the hands of Churchill. They were supported by British money and did what they were told. They never did anything else. When they assembled considerable armed forces in Egypt, these mutinied against Royalist-British control and were thoroughly purged by the British of all except the Rightist element. The small forces remaining were rigorously trained to go back to Greece and install the King in power. Except for Churchill’s determination that George should be restored to his throne he would have had no chance whatsoever of returning to Greece as King. On April 17, 1945, the special correspondent of the London Times in Athens wrote that “in October last, when the country was liberated, probably four-fifths of the people were against the king’s return.” In other words, Churchill’s determination to force the King’s return was both foolhardy and unjust.

2. Was EAM-ELAS a patriotic resistance movement? Whatever fighting was done against the Italian and German occupation forces, was done primarily by this group. A leading student of Balkan politics estimates that the Greek resistance movement immobilized between fifteen and twenty enemy divisions.¹³⁵ At a press conference in Athens on October 18, 1944, British Brigadier Barker-Benfield, who had personally directed liaison with the Greek guerrillas over a long period, told the assembled reporters: “We should never have been able to set foot on Greece had it not been for the magnificent efforts of the Resistance Movements of EAM and ELAS.” Within forty-eight hours he was ordered out of Greece, and other British officers who had served with ELAS followed him.¹³⁶ The organization of the Security Battalions by the Germans is further evidence that ELAS caused them great trouble.

3. Was EAM-ELAS a valid popular movement? On this point the evidence is overwhelming. Organized as a resistance movement, it soon had the allegiance of great numbers of people. Some estimated that it controlled ninety per cent of the resistance forces.¹³⁷ Anthony Eden admitted seventy-five per cent in a speech before the House of Commons on April 5, 1944. Since the upper classes generally collaborated, or at least cooperated, with the enemy, it was necessarily mainly a lower-class movement. As such it developed plans for a new Greece in which there would be a better distribution of wealth and a fairer opportunity for all. The vast amount of poverty in Greece would have made this inevitable, apart from Communist leadership. There was some coercion in building up the movement. There had to be coercion of the enemy and of the collaborators. By its very definition a resistance movement opposes force both to a national enemy and to the domestic allies of the enemy. But there was an enormous amount of enthusiasm and voluntary union. The Greek people were united as never before in their history.

4. Would EAM have communized Greece? In the light of our later experience in Eastern Europe, it is easy to assume that of course this would have happened. Many of its ablest leaders were Communists, toughened during four years of confinement in Metaxas’ jails.

Yet the leadership was by no means solely Communist and the Communists in the rank and file were microscopic in number. The EAM leaders also repeatedly demonstrated their good faith. Prior to the April 1944 mutiny they had sent three missions to Cairo in an effort to achieve unity and gain a part in their own Government. All of these attempts had humiliating results. They joined the Beirut Conference, which Venizelos had been able to call during his fleeting moment as head of the Cairo Government. At Beirut the EAM delegates were moderate. They pressed no extreme demands. On August 31, 1944, six EAM ministers went to Cairo and joined the Papandreou Government, though they knew that it was wholly under British control. At the same time they dissolved the Provisional Government of the Mountains, which they had organized in protest against the King’s proposed return. If they had wanted civil war they would hardly have done that, especially since they were in effective control of Greece.

Then late in September 1944, General Sarafis, Commander-in-Chief of ELAS, joined in the Caserta Agreement, promising to make no attempt to seize power at the time of the liberation and putting his forces under General Scobie’s command. Before this agreement ELAS had summarily and bloodily purged the alleged collaborationists at Pyrogos, but after Caserta the Quislings were very generally left alone. After midsummer large parts of Greece were wholly in EAM hands and when the British arrived Athens was completely under EAM control, along with the whole country. If war had been wanted by EAM, then was the time, especially when thousands of German-formed Security Battalion members rushed to surrender to the British who received and protected them. EAM agreed that only the leaders of these outlawed battalions should be tried. Nor was there any evidence in this period of the anarchy and terrorism which Churchill so frequently alleged. Frank Gervasi, of Colliers, and M. W. Fodor, of The Chicago Sun, travelled all the way from Athens to Salonika without encountering any hint of ELAS “depredations” or “massacres.” There was no more support for such charges than there was for Ambassador Leeper’s assertion to Leland Stowe that on December 3: “The police did not shoot first. Grenades were thrown first by ELAS.”¹³⁸

Up to December 1 EAM had gone to great lengths to become a part of the British-sponsored Government. When on that date they were pushed completely to the wall by the demand for the disarmament of ELAS, they did not revolt, but used the constitutional device of resigning from the Cabinet, hoping thus to change the course of events. The measures they then adopted to back up their resignations were strong, as they had to be if they were to be of any avail, but it was not EAM which committed the overt act which pushed the whole situation over into war. When the war did come foreign observers generally noted that ELAS had no strategic plan for fighting it. ELAS men did much heroic fighting, but in an improvised manner.

The question remains: Did EAM hope to gain control of the Government by democratic processes? Unquestionably they had that hope, but it could not have been an immediate one, with the British Army in Athens to support Churchill’s puppets and to back up his well-known determination that King George should return. Later, with the restoration of free elections, about which so much was being said, they could confidently expect to come into control of the Government.

In that event would Greece have been a Communist state? It would unquestionably if Russian armies had occupied Greece in force. Yet even then one wonders. Nobody has ever been able to tame the Greeks and fit them into a mold. The Greek is a “fierce individualist.” The great majority of them are small landowners or mountaineers. It would have taken more than a handful of Communist leaders at the top to regiment them all into a Marxist pattern. No people in the world loves freedom more. None has fought more frequently or more heroically for it.

Both the British and the Americans have found it difficult indeed to stamp out the flame of hope for a freer, better life which EAM represented. In September 1945, the month in which far more than one hundred thousand Athenians turned out to celebrate the fourth anniversary of EAM, Edmund Wilson sent this report from Greece to the New Yorker: “It had become very plain to me since I had been in Greece that the movement which the British had disarmed, and which the United States had allowed them to disarm, was neither a chess play directed from Moscow nor a foray of bandits from the hills—but a genuine popular movement which had recruited almost all that was generous, courageous and enlightened in Greece; the most spirited among the young, the most clear-sighted among the mature.”¹³⁹

5. Why was Churchill determined to control Greece? There is small question that a majority of the British people were not in agreement with Churchill’s course in Greece. The majority of the British correspondents in Athens were outraged by the war there. They admitted sadly that it should not have happened.¹⁴⁰ Most of the British officials in Cairo doubted that Churchill could enthrone King George in Athens again.

Even Churchill would not have minded a liberal Greek Government in Athens, if it were firmly tied to Britain. No liberal Government, however, could be “trustworthy,” let alone a radical democratic movement based upon the broad masses of the people. Churchill would never have dreamed of entrusting EAM with control of the Greek Government, even if there had been no Communists in it. That it had many Communist leaders of course made it completely anathema to him. Soon after EAM had been crushed by American tanks and planes in British hands, Churchill maintained to the House of Commons on January 18, 1945, that he had but one principle for the liberated countries: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, set up on a basis of election by free and universal suffrage, with secrecy of the ballot and no intimidation.” That was “our only aim, our only interest, and our only care.”¹⁴¹ That was good democratic rhetoric, but the last thing Churchill would have permitted in Greece was a free election, for he knew that EAM would win it. There could therefore be no election in Greece until the Government was securely in Rightist hands, including all the machinery of intimidation.

What Churchill wanted in Greece is, of course, perfectly clear. He wanted to restore the traditional British control of Greece. This was absolutely indispensable to him, since the Russians were pushing down into the Balkans and he had not been able to forestall them. Future military and political strategy therefore made it extremely urgent in his mind that Greece should be regained and firmly held. He would, however, have acted as he did if the Soviet compulsion had been absent. Greece was in effect a British colony. Its public utilities, shipping and insurance were dominated by the British, who held a third of the Greek national debt and controlled one of its main banks. Greece was a part of Britain’s imperial heritage, and he would no more have thought of surrendering her than of giving up any acre of ground which was formerly part of His Majesty’s empire.

As soon therefore as EAM began to rise in Greece it was automatically Churchill’s enemy. He already had his King George, whom he could depend upon to control Greece in British interest. Moreover, Churchill firmly, even passionately, believed in monarchy as an institution. It was wicked of the Greeks not to give allegiance to their rightful sovereign. George was taken firmly in hand, his hot-house government in Egypt was firmly protected by censorship, and from the Greek people, even when a majority of its troops on the spot mutinied. It was protected especially against EAM, whose members became “bandits” to Churchill as soon as it was probable that they had developed political objectives. From that time on, the frustration of EAM merged into the disarmament of ELAS. A bitter war was required to complete the job and thousands of dissenting Greeks were shipped out of Greece to join the other thousands already imprisoned in Africa by Britain, but whatever was necessary to accomplish Churchill’s objective was done, even though it meant that the proven Greek patriots must be crushed, along with all that was hopeful, constructive and forward-looking in EAM.

At his Athens press conference on December 6, 1944, Churchill explained everything. Britain did not desire “any material advantages from Greece,” of any kind—territorial, commercial or political. Of course, he was in honor bound to “insist on the acceptance and fulfillment of General Scobie’s terms.” Beyond that “all we want from the Greeks is our ancient friendship.”¹⁴²

That was it exactly. Churchill wanted “a friendly government” in Greece, and he could not be sure that it would be friendly unless it were securely in the hands of the Royalists, even if they were largely the people who had collaborated with the Germans. To make certain of his friendly government he rejected the appointment of Sofoulis, which would have nipped the war in the bud, and he vetoed all attempts to find an alternative Greek Government.¹⁴³

---